


Lessons In Flying

by luvanderwon, moonix



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: Everyone Is Gay, Ghislain is a man mountain, Jeannot has an eyebrow, Luvander is a prize plum, Multi, Raphael is a poetic disaster, dragons are awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-04-29 13:58:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 148,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5130200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luvanderwon/pseuds/luvanderwon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonix/pseuds/moonix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taking place before Havemercy, this story follows the early adventures of the Dragon Corps and how they learn to fly. Featuring poetic disasters, unsolved mysteries, very accurate weather forecasts, dragons who know what's up, incredibly understanding prostitutes, oodles of denial, various sexual awakenings, unwelcome siblings, thinly veiled jokes about stabbing, and as many uncomfortable situations as possible!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lesson One: Meet Your Acclaimed Royal Dragon Corps

**Author's Note:**

> So, this story is finished, and we will post chapters (semi) regularly, though we might be persuaded to update faster if bribed with comments, kudos, and firstborn children!
> 
> Trigger warnings: minor internalised homophobia, some mentions of poor parenting. We can't think of anything else right now but we will check chapters as we post them. If there's anything you think should be mentioned here, please let us know.
> 
> EDIT: one of our readers pointed out that one of the background relationships in this story can be read as abusive. While that wasn't our original intention, we agree that this is a valid interpretation, so we're just putting this here so no one gets surprised by it later on. It's not a main focus of the story though and there are no actual descriptions of (physical/emotional) violence.

It was simultaneously the first and worst day of Ivory's brand new shiny life as a member of the acclaimed royal Dragon Corps.

On the one hand, he was a member of the acclaimed royal Dragon Corps, which meant he had a large, fire-breathing, terrifying and beautiful new best friend. On the other hand, he had to wear a stupid uncomfortable uniform and share a stupid uncomfortable barracks with eleven other members of the acclaimed royal Dragon Corps, all of whom looked like they enjoyed the sort of activities nominally referred to as 'fun' and 'good times'; all of which Ivory hated. In fact, the only thing he hated more than supposed 'fun' and 'good times' was sharing a room. Which was unfortunate.

When he was shown to his room – which was not so much _his_ room as _the_ room in which he had a bed and some drawers which did not look as if they were very capable of Keeping Out Room Mates From Private Things – two of the other three were already installed. If by ‘installed’ one meant 'lounging on the windowsill smoking', which Ivory apparently now did. Two pairs of judgemental brown eyes lingered over his stalling in the doorway and, Ivory was fairly certain, formed an opinion – probably less than positive – of him within zero point three seconds before he'd even said anything.

They were both well-dressed. That was a bad start.

Ivory had just convinced his jaw to unlock so he could at least say something trivial and mundane like “hello” when he was rudely cut off by a strangled sound in the corridor behind him and someone barrelling straight into his back.

By the time Ivory had managed to regain his balance by holding onto the nearest bedpost, the two fancy gits on the windowsill were already in hysterics, and the unfortunate newcomer, who turned out to be a pink-faced, broad-shouldered mess of curls and wayward charm, was apologising profusely while picking up a pile of books that had gone sprawling from his big hands at the impact. Ivory tried not to let it show how shaken he was and bent down to retrieve one that had skidded half under the bed. Its jacket was worn and held together with tape, and there were many dog-eared pages that had been carefully smoothed out again. A single dried leaf fluttered out from between the pages as he handed it back.

“Thanks,” the newcomer said, still looking flustered. An outrageous cowlick of curls had drifted in front of his eyes and he wiped them away impatiently. “And sorry again. I'm Raphael, by the way.”

“Ra- _fail_ , you mean,” one of the windowsill scarecrows muttered, and they were off again.

“Oh, very original,” Raphael snorted, “like I've not heard that one before. And good morning to you, too, Amery. If I'd known we were going to be room mates, I'd have had a drink before coming here.”

Amery, the one he'd spoken to, leaned way too far out the window on his next roaring “Ha!” for Ivory's liking – or maybe not far enough, actually, for he caught himself just before going over the edge, and jumped down with more slinky grace than Ivory would've previously given him credit for to envelop Raphael in a gruff, one-armed hug and clasp his hand.

“Niall and I picked a room motto already,” Amery grinned, sharp like whiplash. “Welcome to the den of debauchery and sin, fairy boy.”

Things weren't getting any better for Ivory. He wondered what the regulations were on changing rooms, and then thought about what, exactly, he might end up rooming with if he did swap, and suppressed a shudder. Things looked bleak and hideous here; Ivory foresaw a life of boyish banter and bad jokes, but at least they looked physically clean. None of them smelled. None of them were wearing boots still covered in horse muck and putting them on the furniture. Ivory was already safe in the knowledge that sharing a room with three strangers who were mad enough to have been accepted to fly dragons the same as him was going to be horrible on a multitude of levels but, he realised with a headrush of cold, unfortunate clarity, he could probably do worse than share with three mad strangers who were also all tall, dark and handsome.

He made it through the better part of the day by keeping busy. Unpacking was a rather short-lived affair, because Ivory still didn't trust those drawers, but there was lunch in the mess hall, which was not surprisingly but still exhaustingly noisy, and after that, they were required to assemble in one of the classrooms, where their future Chief Sergeant and some of their academy instructors welcomed them personally and outlined their new training regimen, which would start early the next day.

Ivory skipped dinner to take a shower in the thankfully empty communal bathrooms, as well as a nap in his bed after checking that his room mates had all gone down to the mess hall with the others. Amery had already dumped his things on one of the top bunks when Ivory had moved in that morning, so Ivory had claimed the second one for himself, while Niall had rolled around in the bed underneath Amery's “to mark it with his scent” and Raphael had stacked his books on the floor beside the only other available bed, namely the one underneath Ivory's. It made Ivory feel strangely itchy to imagine Raphael curled up there, not much more than an arm's length away from him, but all other configurations were more or less equally discomfiting, so he was going to use the opportunity to sleep now rather than lying wide awake later thinking about Raphael's shoulders or the salad he wasn't having for dinner.

~

It was simultaneously the first and worst day of Luvander's brand new shiny life as a member of the acclaimed royal Dragon Corps.

He couldn't really remember how he'd ended up here, apart from that he'd wanted to see the city and joining the army had seemed like a great way to meet men, and then it hadn't been quite the army after all and the only men he'd met had been aggressively interested in women, so that was a let down. He'd thought about running away then, except he had nowhere to run to, and then one day there'd been Yesfir and her shiny hide and shinier fangs and she'd made him feel sparkly inside in a way nobody else had ever done, not even Matthew from the farm that day in the stables. And now he was here, packed up to unpack, all angled and awkward in a room set up for four to share, except there was no one else here yet.

Luvander hated making decisions, and there were four beds to choose from.

He chose the top left, and then decided a bottom bunk was safer if he needed to hide, so quickly relocated himself below. Then he changed his mind again and swapped for the right hand side, and was just whispering “no” to himself and moving back to the left again when the first of his room mates showed up, catching him still right in the middle of the room, trailing indecision and anxiety. “Hello,” he said carefully, a split of a grin belying the tone. One of his teeth had a tiny chip. “Name's Ace,” he added, offering a hand. His hair was the bright red of an August sunrise.

“I'm, um, Luvander,” Luvander told him, and then felt stupid for hesitating over his own name like that. “I was just trying to choose a bed?”

“Ah,” Ace said, nodding wisely. “Not easy, eh? Oh man, bunk beds!”

Despite his words, it took Ace about three seconds to dump his bag on the floor and climb up on the top bunk on the left side _and_ nearly fall off the ladder. The only thing that stopped him cracking his skull open on the cold stone floor of the room was Luvander instinctively grabbing him by the scruff of his neck.

“Sweet reflexes,” Ace told him, still hanging haphazardly off the ladder, and held his palm out. Luvander hesitated, then gave it a tentative high-five, and Ace laughed. “You're gonna have to up your game with that, but it'll do for now I guess. Have you checked out the rooftop yet?”

“The... rooftop?” Luvander asked, feeling increasingly uncool.

“Yeah man, the view is awesome,” Ace said, now busy rearranging his duvet and stuffing snacks down the side of his mattress. Luvander saw a packet of crumpets, and decided he was going to like this brash new boy who seemed so intent on falling off things, so he set himself up on the bunk underneath Ace's and draped his scarf over the bedpost to claim it.

“Guess we're gonna be seeing a lot more of that view once we get to ride our dragons. I just can't fucking wait, I don't even know why we have to go through _even more training_ , ugh. Which one's yours, by the way?”

“Yesfir,” Luvander whispered reverently. There was something like a tiny locket filled with warmth buried deep in his chest when he thought of her, but he wasn't going to say something cindy like that in front of his new room mate.

Before Ace could tell him the name of his dragon, and about two seconds after Luvander had the thought that maybe things weren't going to be so bad after all, the door was kicked open and a tall blond boy marched inside with a nervous redhead in tow.

“Bunk beds,” he sneered, looking disappointed. “You'd think they could afford something better for their cherished _elite_ , but no, we get bunk beds and shitty coffee. And do you know? I think one of the instructors tried to hit on me this morning. Disgusting.”

Immediately, Luvander's tentative, smoke-thin shaving of potential hope withered before it had even unfurled. “Man,” Ace was busy replying, sprawled out on his stomach with his chin propped in one hand, legs crossed at the ankle in the air behind him, “Ev, I thought you were too stuck up to get picked. Guess I was wrong, how 'bout that. And you know, you missed a trick with that instructor, maybe they could've instructed you on swapping the stick up your arse for something more fun?” he giggled, and Luvander liked him again, and then crushed that thought like a poisonous insect beneath the heel of his heart.

“Fuck off,” Ev, or whatever his name was, snarled, and Luvander disliked him with the same intensity.

The second redhead, whose face was crawling with so many freckles they reminded Luvander of a swarm of ginger thunder flies in high summer, twitched his fingers convulsively in the neck of his standard issue canvas duffel bag, and shifted from one foot to the other and back again.

“Hello, I'm Evariste,” the blond boy now said, shaking Luvander's hand even before Luvander had finished extending it to him. “And this is Merritt, who I'm sure will end up with someone's boot in his face if he doesn't stop fidgeting any time soon.”

The way he said it made it very clear whose boot that was going to be, too.

The four of them spent the rest of the morning meticulously unpacking (Luvander), lounging around on the top bunk loudly fantasizing about all the shenanigans they could get up to here (Ace), and bickering about whether or not it was Merritt's fault that Ev's drawers jammed. Just before lunch, there was a little stampede outside their door and a laughing, dark-haired boy stuck his head inside the room to “check out the competition”, followed by two others piling in after him, one of whom had the most darling riot of curls wreaking havoc around his face, and the other...

“What game are we playing?” Ace hissed conspiratorially, dangling upside-down from the top bunk.

“Game?” Luvander asked, confused.

“Yeah,” Ace said eagerly, nodding upside-down, which made Luvander's stomach feel queasy. “You were staring at the floor holding your breath. Must be some kind of competition. Right?”

“Oh,” Luvander squeaked, immediately drawing a very large breath, but still avoiding glancing back at the third boy, who was currently teasing Merritt about stumbling over Ev's boots. “I was just. Thinking about flying, is all. Must be great.”

“Must be _awesome_ ,” Ace sighed wistfully, and did a very dangerous thing that involved jumping off his bunk, turning in mid-air, and landing on all fours like a cat. “Lunch time!”

Luvander decided that while Ace was terrifying and exciting and he needed to not think too much about that, and while Evariste was going to probably be his arch nemesis, he could definitely do worse – if he'd been put in a dorm with the trio of tall, dark, handsome delights who'd come sauntering in just now, he would very definitely be in big trouble. There was only so much not staring and private fantasizing a person could do before he got called out for being a pillow-biting pervert.

~

Ivory met Luvander at breakfast on their first full day, when the sun was barely out of bed behind the mountains and most of their new dorm mates looked like they couldn't work out which way was up – except for Niall, who had jumped out of bed singing and neatly kicked Raphael's arm on his way down where it was drooping over the side of the bed. “Not sorry,” he'd worked into the tune of whatever filthy song he was humming – Ivory didn't recognise it - “should sleep more tidily!” Raphael had rolled over with a muffled groan and pulled his own pillow over his head and Niall had increased his volume. Annoyingly, Ivory noticed as he tried to work out the best way to navigate himself into his clothes and out of the room without having to speak to or look at any of them, Niall was actually pretty tuneful.

The mess hall was a long, low room in the bowels of the building with two slim tables that stretched from end to end, bracketed by benches. Food was laid out on one of them, plates at the other. There was no green tea, probably because they weren't meant to like anything that came out of Ke'Han even if it tasted good, so Ivory poured himself orange juice and a mug of weak black tea whilst trying not to notice Raphael spilling the milk and Amery and Niall attacking each other with bread rolls. The other new recruits were also there, and Ivory didn't remember if he'd even met any of them yesterday, so he didn't bother with feeling awkward over not remembering any of their names. There was enough to feel awkward about already, anyway.

He and Luvander didn't actually talk over breakfast just yet, but they did share an unimpressed Look across the table when they were the only ones who were eating their breakfast in civilised silence as opposed to trying to find out if you could play darts with the forks by throwing them at the wall to see if they stuck, pelting their room mates with bread rolls, or fidgeting orange juice all over the porridge and several people's unfortunate sleeves.

After breakfast, they had navigation class, which used to be Ivory's favourite, but was rather marred by the fact that Niall and Amery were sitting behind him making up uncouth star constellations and trying to put little scraps of paper into Raphael's hair without him noticing. When that was over, they went for a belated morning run, because “some comedian” had blocked the doors over night and it had taken the guards a while to figure out how to remove a giant statue of some decorated war hero from where it was jammed between a stack of toilets and another statue of the Esarina without damaging either of them. Ivory enjoyed running usually – and in this instance, particularly enjoyed that he wasn't among the people lagging behind for once, noting with vicious satisfaction that Amery and Niall seemed to be dragging a red-faced Raphael along between them – but then the two redheads in front of him managed to bring almost the whole corps down in the mud in some freak accident, including Ivory, and running was a lot less pleasant when you were wet, covered in muck and had twisted your ankle. So Ivory did end up lagging behind, after all, too proud to tell the instructor about his ankle, and that was how he found Luvander hiding in the undergrowth behind a sharp right turn in the path.

“Hello,” he said, sounding desperate. “I'm not not running, I swear, I'm just not... running.”

“Right,” Ivory nodded, confused. “Did you twist your ankle too?”

“Yes,” Luvander immediately brightened up, which was how Ivory knew he was lying. Nobody looked happy about twisting their ankle whether they were out on an enforced run or not.

However, “me too,” he admitted, because that _was_ true, and so far Luvander seemed to be the least offensive of all the men he was stuck with here, even if all he had to go on was the lack of childish jokes and unorthodox uses of breakfast foods. Ivory had never much wanted to make friends with anybody, but he did like having someone to talk to every now and then. Nobody else seemed a suitable candidate yet. “Here,” he offered Luvander a hand. “We can limp back together, might be faster than limping by ourselves.”

“Thanks,” Luvander said, allowing Ivory to pull him to his feet, and then his face turned miserable again. “I haven't actually twisted my ankle,” he whispered. “I'm just more, umm... well, more of an agility person than an athlete, you know? I'm very good on the assault course.”

“I hate the assault course,” Ivory said, “but I'm not bad at running, usually, if idiots don't trip me over in the mud. So between us we make the perfect soldier, right?”

Luvander's face relaxed back into something shaped from ease and relief, losing some of the burnt edge of embarrassed anxiety it had sported when Ivory had found him in the bushes. “It's Ivory, right?” he checked. “You were the one who didn't come to dinner.”

Ivory grimaced. He didn't particularly want any sort of reputation at all, but if he had to have one – and he probably did – he could think of better things than _the one who missed meals._ He'd have to work on that. “I had things to do,” he said, shortly.

“What things?” Luvander inquired, slipping one arm uninvited under Ivory's shoulders and across his back, which – huh, fancy that – actually made limping on his twisted ankle a lot easier, and didn't feel completely like he was using the other man as a crutch.

“Oh, you know,” he foundered for some things he might feasibly have been doing instead of having dinner, and naturally, awkwardly, ended up saying the first words that flickered to the front of his mind. “Music. Knives.”

“Music and knives?” Luvander smirked. “Intriguing.”

“Yes,” Ivory replied, and clamped his mouth shut just as the clouds broke overhead and added their meteorological insult to his muddy, clumsy comrade induced injury.

“Ahh, yes, rain,” Luvander sighed, and hoiked Ivory closer so they could limp faster. “Just when we weren't already going to be fighting for first showers and hot water. Brilliant.”

The afternoon was scheduled for an introduction to the rest of the corps as it already stood – five men including the Chief Sergeant – followed by a class on dragon mechanics (“or, how to tell if you're about to crash and burn,” Luvander rephrased in a whisper at lunch time, and Ivory almost smiled until he added “but probably nothing on what to do to stop that if it happens.”) There was a medical examination before dinner, and the evening was free. Ivory was already planning to take another shower and find out if there was, by any thin and pathetic chance, a piano here. Apparently day two started with an entire morning of physical exercise which included the dreaded phrase _team work_ , and Ivory needed to thrash out some very angry chords if he was going to be able to deal with that.

But first, they had to find a way out of the mess hall without getting dragged into the food fight currently being waged between Amery, Niall and Ace.

They arrived at the classroom only slightly compromised by custard, which Luvander did a brilliant job of covering up with the help of two scarves and a whole lot of tricky draping. Unfortunately, that made them the butt of quite a few jokes about love bites, ending with Ivory having to flash the knife in his boot just before the chief sergeant banged open the door and called for order.

“Oh, _knives_ ,” Luvander muttered in his ear, “I get it now. Useful quality to have in a friend. I wonder what you can do with music...”

He winked and turned back to the front, and Ivory was left wondering just how on earth he'd managed to get the label _friend_ attached to him in under two days. His brothers would be proud.

“These strapping young men will be your mentors for the time being,” Adamo was saying, gesturing at the four airmen lined up smirking and, in one case, giggling at the front of the classroom. Apparently Ivory had missed the first part of his speech, including their names, but then the airmen started introducing themselves, and Ivory made extra effort to remember them, because it was one thing not knowing half your fellow recruits' names, but these guys looked like they would not take kindly to such blatant disrespect.

“My name's Jeannot,” the smallest one of the four said, stepping forward and loosely crossing his arms in front of his chest. “I ride Al Atan, one of the jacquelines. Been on three raids so far, all great fun.”

One of the redheads raised his hand.

“Did you ever fall off?” he said excitedly before even being called on.

Jeannot's eyebrow did something very inappropriate, and Luvander made a squeaky little noise next to Ivory and sank low in his seat.

“I came close once,” Jeannot smirked. “Managed to hold on to the reins though, and Ghislain here plucked my arse out of the air again.”

“ _Wicked_ ,” the redhead whispered loudly while Jeannot preened.

“Moving on,” Adamo said, gesturing for the aforementioned Ghislain to step forward.

He didn't say a lot, which Ivory approved of, just rumbled his name and said he rode Compassus, in a voice which sounded like a storm breaking or an avalanche meeting a plateau. Ghislain's arms were folded and his shoulders were probably twice the width of Ivory each, and he thought he heard Luvander sigh miserably, though that might have been the rain against the windows.

After Ghislain was Compagnon, who managed to stop giggling long enough to introduce himself and add “I'm on Spiridon,” before the edge of his mouth slipped sideways into a snigger again. “Gotta tell you,” he added with the caramel twist of an unsheathed laugh, “you're all mad. This is mad. Dragons, it's insane!” The fourth airman put a hand on his shoulder and leaned in to whisper something which made Compagnon laugh even harder. He looked like he couldn't have said anything more if he'd wanted to. Next to Ivory, Luvander was tracing shapes into the table top with the tip of one finger, and swallowing like he desperately wanted to say something inappropriate and awful.

“I'm Magoughin,” the final airman announced then, in a rich, northern accent that sounded like it slid down his throat with whisky and ginger. This time, Luvander definitely whispered _for fuck's sake,_ and Ivory glanced at him in concern before Magoughin continued “Chastity's my girl,” and the laughing man – Compagnon – started giggling again.

Magoughin joined right in.

“Nothing chaste about her, mind you,” he snickered, and Luvander gave a sad little groan.

There was a small break before the dragon mechanics class, which Ivory and Luvander used to get rid of the last of the custard, and, in Luvander's case, to rant about how their fellow comrades were all unfairly fit and strong while all they had going for themselves was knives and speed.

“Raphael had trouble running, too,” Ivory pointed out, trying to be helpful, then for some reason thought about sweaty, flushed, out of breath Raphael leaning against a tree and moaning about having to do this every day from now on, which wasn't even _remotely helpful at all_.

“He's the curly-haired disaster, isn't he?” Luvander said with a brief frown like a wisp of smoke or clouds drifting across his forehead. “Okay, yes, but have you seen his shoulders? So not fair. I bet he could carry us both on them without breaking a sweat.”

“Hmm,” Ivory said non-committally. His stomach had just done an odd thing, and he was far too worried about whether Amery and Niall had put something in his food this morning to listen to the rest of Luvander's rant as they walked back to class together. It was only when the bell rang and Luvander sighed “wish I could find a way to get out of that medical exam” that Ivory even remembered that particular nuisance in their timetable, and wished right along with him.

~

It wasn't that Luvander was worried about his health. He knew he was fit and in well enough shape – he wouldn't have made it this far otherwise, and being from the countryside and marching with what he'd thought was the army for several months had its benefits. He was built for short bursts of high action rather than endurance, but that hadn't been a problem before. Anyway, now that Yesfir had chosen him he was under the impression they _couldn't_ kick him out even if he wasn't up to running ten miles or uprooting trees and carrying them home on his back like Ghislain looked capable of doing.

What Luvander was worried about was that his medical examiners might be cut from the same cloth as every single last fucking other person here so far. That unreasonably, devastatingly attractive cloth, to which Luvander's immunity was apparently exactly zero. It was bad enough with Ace being excitedly delightful and Ivory strange and beautiful, and Luvander simultaneously did not envy him and also envied him so acutely it made his stomach ache, when he thought about Ivory sharing a room with Raphael, Amery and, worst of all, Niall. And on top of that there were the members of the Dragon Corps who were already installed, their apparent mentors: adorable, giggling Compagnon, silently delicious man-mountain Ghislain, Magoughin with that fucking weak-knees accent and Jeannot with his fucking thrice-fucked eyebrow of glorious doom.

Luvander had never been so glad to be called into a medical examination room as he was when he found he was summoned by the first woman he'd seen in the barracks. “Hello,” he smiled, finally relaxing for the first time all day, “can I just say, it is fantastic to finally see a lady in this joint.”

“Don't you start,” the nurse said fiercely, smiling nonetheless. “You're the next smooth-talker in a long line of crazy new recruits to try flirting with me and I can tell you now, it's not going to work.”

“Excellent,” Luvander breathed, “that is the best news I've had all day.”

“You can take your clothes off now,” the nurse told him briskly. “I'm Élodie, by the way.”

“Luvander,” he informed her, unbuttoning his shirt.

“I know.”

“Of course you do,” he remembered, sliding his shirt off his shoulders and leaning up against the skinny, institutional bed to start on his trousers. “So all the other charmers before me have been chatting you up too, have they?”

“Indeed,” Élodie said, short and disinterested. “Just as unsuccessfully as you.”

“Even the, ah, handsome young man before me?” Luvander asked, trying not to sound too eager. “The one with the, you know, _mouth_?”

He gestured at his own mouth to underline his point, which was that Niall had the most beautiful lips he'd ever seen on a person – he could only _imagine_ what they'd look like engaged in something else than gossiping – while Élodie swiftly took his blood pressure and ushered him on a set of scales.

“Especially that one,” she muttered, scribbling something down on her chart. This news cheered Luvander up immensely, and he hummed as he stepped off the scales.

“Bit on the skinny side, we're going to put you on a protein diet,” Élodie informed him briskly. “I'm going to measure you now, and then I'll need you to run through a series of movements so I can check if all your bones are in the right place.”

“ _All_ of my bones, ma'am?” Luvander couldn't resist asking, because he was in an inexplicably good mood, and also still in his underwear, because he hadn't known just how cosy the two of them would be getting during this exam. Élodie just sighed and let the measuring tape snap painfully against his shoulder as she rolled it back up.

“Every single time,” she said while Luvander snickered. “Funny how you boys suddenly don't seem so keen on making crude jokes anymore when I ask if you've ever had a prostate exam.”

“Well, that's because none of those other idiots probably ever _have_ ,” Luvander countered smoothly. “I, on the other hand...”

“Yes, I'm sure,” Élodie cut in. “Heard that before too, you've all got fancy big mouths on you. We'll save the best for last, though.”

She waited until the rest of the examination was over before telling him she was joking. “We really don't need that much detail,” she explained, her nose wrinkling slightly and reminding Luvander of his favourite sister when she got annoyed with his teasing. It made him sharply, unexpectedly homesick. “Shame,” he murmured as he shimmied back into his trousers. “I was looking forward to it.”

“I'll bet,” Élodie offered him the same cheeky, dimpled flash of a smile she'd possessed for half a moment when he'd first arrived. “That's what your friend with the mouth said, too. Send me the next idiot on your way out, please.”

Abruptly, Luvander needed to lie down. “Is it awful?” Merritt whispered as they passed each other in the hallway outside, one in and one out. “You're really pale,” he noted, fingers worrying at the cuffs of his shirt. “Is it horrible? Do they make you,” he swallowed audibly, “ _do things_?”

“Nghnmn,” Luvander said, because he was still thinking about Niall and his flirty mouth being disappointed over getting cheated out of a prostate examination and this was so, so unhelpful.

“Oh, shit,” Merritt whispered, and his freckles stood out stark and red and fretful against his colourless skin before he drizzled an anxious knock on the door and Luvander heard Élodie chirp at him to come in.

Luvander didn't even realise that he'd just played an excellent prank on poor Merritt until he'd already reached the common room. Amery, Niall, Ace and Raphael were clustered around two of their mentors by the fire, listening to some outrageous story Magoughin was telling in his boozy, melodic voice, while Ivory was sat at a ramshackle old piano in the corner, teasing hauntingly beautiful notes out of keys that looked by all means like they should be mute. It just _wasn't fair_.

Dimly, he noted that Raphael was looking rather more interested in the piano than in Magoughin's story, and he filed this fact away for later perusal before flopping dramatically down on one of the sofas.

“Ah,” someone said slyly, “I see you've had no luck with the busty nurse either.”

Busty? Luvander hadn't even noticed that. He was going to have to do a lot better if he wanted to pass as _one of the lads_ here, so he sighed “no, no busty nurse for me” in his most woeful voice and flung a hand across his eyes.

“Maybe Ivory can melt her icy heart with some romantic music,” Amery smirked, clinking some ice in his drink. “Eh, Raphael?”

“Hmm,” Raphael agreed vaguely, still engrossed by Ivory's increasingly aggressive playing.

“Don't worry,” Jeannot said smugly, “being an airman comes with several benefits, one of which is that it makes you automatically irresistible to all the ladies. Given a little time, you boys won't know where to put it first.”

There was some murmured approval, a cat call from Niall and a “hear hear” from Amery, and Jeannot and Magoughin clinked glasses while Luvander felt his heart sink in his chest. If that was true, however was he going to get out of “putting it” anywhere at all that belonged to a lady without the others picking up on that? He couldn't even comfort himself with the idea that maybe, in the city where he'd heard good rumours that it wasn't completely frowned upon to fall desperately in love with other men, being an airman might also make him automatically irresistible to them, too. For a split second, he allowed himself a fantasy that this was exactly how it worked and was precisely why they weren't allowed to wear their uniforms yet, because they'd surely get nothing accomplished if they were all to sit around being irresistible to one another. There should, he thought viciously, nudging the edge of his thumb along a seam in the arm of the sofa, be some kind of irresistability suppressant training included in this induction. And on that note, he was absolutely definitely one hundred per cent _not_ going to start thinking about what any of the others would look like in their bastion-damned uniforms, fucking _hell_.

Before he could get too carried away inside his brain and be subsequently incapable of getting off the sofa again, Luvander went over to join Ivory, leaning his hip against the side of the piano and watching the way his fingers teased out tiny, uncomfortable notes. “Alright?” he asked under his breath, and three fingers of Ivory's right hand lingered, spread and spaced over a top chord.

“Fine,” he breathed, with an undertone of _fuck off_ that Luvander heard, noted, and ignored.

“I take it the nurse was just as disinterested in you as the rest of us, then?” he tried.

“No,” Ivory said, played a couple of chords and then swore violently, swirling off the piano stool in an outraged twist of flamboyance that Luvander had not expected at all. “Poor girl hasn't been tuned for fucking _years_ by the sound of it,” he snarled, and for a moment Luvander thought he was talking about Élodie, until Ivory ran his fingertips reverently along the top of the piano's cabinet and then lifted it to peer inside with a tiny frown.

Luvander spent the rest of the night pointedly not thinking about uniforms while watching Ivory fiddle with the piano, which was only a small step up from uniforms, really, because Ivory's hands were – well. Probably what Luvander was going to be dreaming about later, anyway. Dinner was raucous again, but less icky and disastrous than lunch, and he and Ivory escaped custard-free this time.

The next day went surprisingly smoothly, despite another humiliating morning run and the dreaded team work exercises, and Luvander was feeling quite proud of himself as he emerged from a hot shower that night with only one debilitating new crush to add to today's count – their new first aid instructor, who would only be coming to teach them basic medical skills once every other week – when he ran smack into a merrily whistling, stark naked, tall and handsome, pouty-lipped, thoroughly windswept looking Niall.

“Eek,” Luvander said eloquently, clutching at the flimsy towel around his waist as if it were a lifeline, or Yesfir's reins in a storm.

“Oops,” Niall giggled, “careful there, Luv.”

He winked, and for a moment, Luvander thought he'd said _love_ , and his stomach turned into a hundred wriggling electric eels.

“Um,” he panicked, trying to remember how to swallow and fervently reminding himself to keep his eyes up. “You're, I mean, um. Um.”

“Aren't I just,” Niall preened, licking his lips and patting Luvander cheerfully on the shoulder as he sauntered straight past him and into the showers, picking up his whistle right where he'd left off. Some jaunty show tune, Luvander faintly realised, steadying himself against the wall for a second while he caught his breath, and gravely resenting the shared bedroom and communal showers which meant there was absolutely nowhere he could sneak off to for a good, long wank. He hitched the towel closer around his waist, briefly considered asking Ace exactly how one did get to the roof of this bastion-damned building so that he could throw himself off it, and scuttled along down to the bare concrete corridor to his room, praying that nobody else was in. Really, he could manage with two minutes, right now.

Unfortunately, two of the three were lounging carelessly about the place like flotsam, and there went Luvander's frantic fantasies of treasured reunion with his own wrist, just like that. Ace was hanging half off his bed upside-down, his wreckage of red hair swinging around his ears, as he recounted stories about all the eight million ways he'd failed to completely self-destruct in his twenty-three years. Merritt was fidgeting himself into a state on the edge of his pillows as he listened, looking more and more nervous with each daredevil antic Ace shared. “Luvander!” Ace grinned as he came through the door, “nice towel. What's the most ridiculous thing you've ever done, come on, I feel like the odd one out right now. Surely I'm not the only man here who accidentally never made it?”

Luvander gripped his towel in both fists and thought _the most ridiculous thing I have ever done is coming here_ and _I think I'm going to die every time one of you speaks or moves or generally exists in my direction_ and “Niall was just naked in the corridor” and oh, shitting buggering fuck, that one was out loud.

Ace frowned.

“Well that wasn't ridiculous at all,” he said, “what a let-down.”

“I once stepped on our neighbour's dog's foot and got chased four miles until my sister scared it off,” Merritt whispered miserably into the ensuing silence, and Ace whooped with laughter.

“Nice one, Merritt! I underestimated you.”

Luvander slumped dejectedly on his bed and tried to subtly arrange his duvet so the bulge in his towel wouldn't show.

“Hey, Ace?” he asked, while Ace tried to high-five Merritt across the space between their beds. “How _do_ you get up on the roof?”


	2. Lesson Two: On The Subject Of Ladies

The first week passed in a smudged blur of mud, insomnia, weak tea and perpetual discomfort. Ivory got the piano working properly again, which was a relief, because there was only so much polishing of one’s knives one could do to escape the continuous annoyance that was one's room mates, and he took to playing every night while the others were exchanging increasingly inappropriate stories in the common room.

Then it was Saturday, and Ghislain and the other mentors had announced over breakfast that they were all in for an ominous treat that night, so they'd better make sure they were presentable after coming back from their last exercise unit of the day. It was also the day when the mail arrived.

Several people, including Amery, Evariste, Niall and Raphael, got parcels from home. Luvander watched them rather wistfully, not noticing that he was trying to eat his porridge with a butter knife instead of a spoon, and Ivory was busy inspecting the milk jug in case Amery had put something vile in it and jumped when a thick envelope was tossed down beside his elbow. He recognised his name written on the front above what was probably the address, painstakingly copied onto the creamy parchment in his brother Maxwell's bold, spiky handwriting, and quickly hid it from curious eyes, glad for once that Luvander was moping, and so didn't pay him any mind.

As soon as he'd cleared his plate, Ivory got up and left Luvander to figure out the spoon-butter-knife conundrum, tucking himself into an alcove under a set of stairs to look at his letter in peace. He was annoyed when he unfolded the paper to reveal three long pages of Maxwell's handwriting, not even a single drawn picture or other indication of what the letter was about. His brother knew damn well that Ivory couldn't read, it was just so like him to send him a letter to try and force him to ask one of his comrades to read it to him so he'd _have_ to talk to people.

Which Ivory was _not_ going to do, thank you very much.

He was still scowling down at the words that twisted and blurred mockingly in front his eyes when Raphael tripped past on his way out of the mess hall.

“Oh, Ivory, hi,” he stumbled to a halt and dragged one hand through his furious hair. It looked even more uncoordinated than usual today, which Ivory knew was because Amery and Niall had hidden the shampoo yesterday and Raphael had only been able to wash it with soap. “Er,” he stalled now, rubbed the cup of his palm over his jaw and then folded himself down in a surprisingly graceful move on to the floor beside Ivory, legs crossed and hands in his lap. His package from home, brown paper and string exploding in a crinkled, familiar mess, was still clutched tightly in one hand. “You got a letter too, huh?” he said. “Family, or, uh. Haha, um, girlfriend?”

Ivory stared at him, trying to work out what exactly was going on and why exactly Raphael thought it was appropriate to interrupt his private letter time even if he _couldn't_ read it. “My brother,” he said shortly.

“Oh,” Raphael sighed, and leaned back against the wall with his broad shoulders, twisting slightly so he could see Ivory properly. “Right. Me too, I mean, well,” he waved his parcel in a limp circle in front of them. “Family.”

“Ok,” Ivory frowned.

“So,” Raphael breathed, and Ivory waited.

“Did you,” he asked carefully when Raphael didn't add anything and the noise from the mess hall was filtering like last season's unfashionable leftovers down the corridor, muted and uninteresting, “want... something?”

“Oh,” Raphael said, blinking. “No. I just, well. It's nice, isn't it? Hearing from home. Do you want some chocolate?”

Ivory was about to say no, but the chocolate that Raphael tugged out of the parcel was his absolute favourite, and he hadn't had chocolate in _months_. It was still wrapped, too, which was a good sign in so far as it meant Amery and Niall probably hadn't had their grubby fingers on it yet. Ivory broke off a tiny piece, murmured a bashful “thanks” and nibbled on it, trying to make it last.

“My brother wants to apply at the 'Versity next year,” Raphael told him, his fingers worrying at one of the letters in the parcel. There were three separate envelopes amid the sweets, and one tucked into a book that they'd probably sent on for Raphael, and something in Ivory's stomach opened like a flower at dawn as he thought that Raphael must be loved very much by his family back home.

“I don't know if he has a chance, what with him being from the country and all, but he's studying very hard... I left him most of my books, of course.”

Ivory didn't really know what to say. He was overtaken by a sudden homesickness that bloomed like a bruise in his chest and made his throat close up; a yearning for Maxwell's beloved philosophical treatises stacked to the ceiling in the living room, for the smell of green tea in the morning, for the quiet of their house and their oldest brother Sebastian's fancy cooking experiments, and for the gemstone comfort of his cat tucked up against his stomach in the wicker chair by the fireplace.

“Hey,” Raphael murmured, one hand raised as if to touch him. “You okay?”

“Obviously,” Ivory hissed through his teeth, and: “don't.”

Thankfully, Raphael didn't, but he did curl his knees up to his chest and loop one of his arms around them, watching Ivory with something that looked alarmingly like concern in his eyes. “You're not like the others,” he said softly, and countered it with “Amery and Niall, I mean,” when Ivory glared at him.

“No,” he agreed, and pushed himself to his feet, feeling dizzy. “I'm not.”

Ivory stalked off before Raphael could find his own feet and follow him, Maxwell's frustrating, incomprehensible letter shoved messily into his pocket and his fist still clutched around the words. Ivory hated that it was a piece of home and he couldn't have it, not without sharing it with somebody else which would, firstly, offer himself up to intense ridicule, and secondly mean that it wasn't wholly his any longer, and he hated that even more. The anger glittered in the depths of his stomach like the spitting hot embers when the common room fire was dying out, and Ivory wished they were training properly, wished they were with the dragons already, instead of this stupid month-long induction nonsense. Apparently there were final adjustments to be made by mechanics and magicians. Ivory didn't believe it. He'd spent three hours with Cassiopeia when they'd been introduced. She was the most perfect thing ever to have existed, with all the cold merciless fury he could feel beginning to boil in the back of his chest as he thought about the words in his pocket and Amery and Niall keeping him awake at night with their careless gossip and casual insults, and Raphael shifting in the bed underneath his with his shoulders and his hair and his big hands and his brother who wanted to go to the 'Versity, and Ivory wanted to break something precious and he didn't understand why.

He blamed Maxwell.

To make matters worse, they had assault training that day. Ivory dawdled in his room for as long as he could get away with before making his foul-tempered way to the gym, the letter angrily shoved down his boot for fear of someone discovering it if he left it under his pillow or in any other obvious hiding places, and when he entered, the day was made infinitely worse by Luvander running at him, green eyes frantic and foaming like the sea down in Molly, and hissing “they're taking us to a brothel tonight, Ivory, _how_ are we going to get out of this?” under his breath.

They didn't get any more chance to talk, though, and then after training Luvander was dragged into some sort of ball game with Ace, and Ivory was feeling too humiliated and exhausted to even open his mouth. He took a long, hot shower, put on some fresh clothes, made an effort to eat all of his dinner no matter how much his stomach was rebelling and had no less than four cups of tea before he was starting to feel remotely human again, then spent the rest of the afternoon coaxing small, quiet melodies out of his piano in the hopes that people would forget about him and just leave without him.

He had no such luck, of course.

Ghislain, Magoughin and Jeannot were rounding up all the recruits around eight, and Ivory refused to be carried into the carriages waiting outside and thus walked on his own. His room mates were already clustered by the front doors, apparently talking about their ideal girls; even Raphael, who, for some reason, quickly shut up when Ivory stalked past, and proceeded to look contrite and worried in favour of the easy, relaxed smile that had teased at his lips earlier. Ivory ignored him.

“Ivory, in here!” Luvander called, waving out of one of the carriages. Ace was sitting backwards on the horse in front of it, while Merritt was trying to convince him that this was a bad idea and that he was going to get kicked in the kidneys any moment now, and Evariste and Compagnon were standing to the side, snickering over something Compagnon had said. Ivory ducked into the carriage next to Luvander, trying to mask the crinkle of paper in his pocket by loudly scuffing his boot on the seat. He'd meant to just burn the letter in the fireplace of the common room earlier, but had been assaulted by a new stab of homesick longing and hadn't had the heart to get rid of it just yet.

“You're not... keen on going either, are you?” Luvander whispered, nervously tugging on Ivory's sleeve.

“I've told you,” Ivory bit out, layering boredom over his words so that the raw irritation wouldn't be too obvious. He wasn't irritated with Luvander, after all. “The only things I'm keen on are music, knives, and Cassiopeia.”

He didn't ask Luvander why exactly it was that _he_ was so keen on not going to the whorehouse. It was tempting, but Luvander's interests were so painfully apparent anyway and he was so convinced he was doing a good job of covering that up that Ivory couldn't quite find it in himself to sabotage that. Not tonight, anyhow. At least Luvander wasn't talking about which way he preferred to fuck or how many women he'd had sweet on him back home.

It wasn't Our Lady, which Ivory had heard of and not paid any attention to. Apparently they weren't quite rich and famous enough for that just yet - “just wait 'til they've measured you up and you've got your jackets on,” Magoughin winked. “Then you've got carte blanche to go wherever you want. You'll still have to pay up front, that's good business and all, but ain't nobody going to be questioning if you can afford a place, you know?”

The brothel had three entertainment rooms on the ground floor which all ran into one another, private rooms were upstairs, in a circle around a cluster of bathrooms. Out of the corner of his eye, Ivory spotted Ghislain and Jeannot having a quiet conversation with the Madam on the ground floor, who eyed them all approvingly, said something that made Jeannot smirk and Ghislain kiss her on the hand, and then she disappeared again about her business. “Well, at least there's not girls _everywhere_ ,” Luvander sidled up and whispered, panic lacing between his letters. Ivory wished he'd go away, this was bad enough already, and he was still angry. “I thought they'd be everywhere, you know, with their frilly bits and their perfume and their... I don't know, their lady-ness. Oh fuck, I think that one's looking at us.”

A girl swung by with a bottle of wine and an impressive array of wine glasses held in just one hand, and Ivory took two for himself and Luvander, figuring it couldn't hurt. That way, at least they had something to hold on to that wasn't each other's sleeves. Then, because Ivory was quite good at finding the least frequented spots in crowded places, he manoeuvred them both over to a small sofa half-hidden behind beaded curtains and glared at Luvander until he stopped hyperventilating.

“Let's just observe, for a bit,” he muttered.

So they observed.

There were other clients dotted about the room, chatting and drinking and watching some of the girls do a little dance routine on a raised dais over by the bar. Ivory longingly eyed the piano, but it was occupied by a girl with a knotted coil of fine blonde hair, twisted into little plaits that rampaged around her ears. She was laughing while she played, pretty little giggles that matched the simple, jaunty folk number she was bouncing out of the keys. He half recognised it, a countryside song, something about a beggar and a wolf, except nobody was singing.

Niall and Amery had already engaged a pair of girls. Amery was leaning against a table pouring wine for a redhead with curves like the rounded, tiered streets of Upper Charlotte, and Niall had pulled a slinky, feline dark-skinned lady into his lap in an armchair. Raphael, Evariste, Ghislain and Magoughin were lounging on some sofas watching the dancing and sharing a bottle of something red between them. The only people who looked about as uncomfortable as Ivory and Luvander felt were Merritt and Ace, although they both tried to cover it up in different ways: Ace, by chattering non-stop about all the exciting and dangerous things you could do with a pair of handcuffs, and Merritt, by drinking a lot of alcohol and nodding enthusiastically along to everything Ace said.

“Maybe we can get away with just... sitting here until they've all picked girls and disappeared, and then we can pretend we've done the same thing and just got back a little earlier,” Luvander mused, then made an unhappy noise in the back of his throat when Niall and his slinky lady slunk up a staircase together.

“Mm,” Ivory said, lazily swirling his wine. Now that the adrenaline of the day had worn off, he was sleepy and achy, and he just wanted to go somewhere quiet where he could have a cup of tea and look at Maxwell's letter again. “Except for the part where neither of us looks even remotely like we've done...”

He trailed off and pointed at Jeannot, who was being kissed in a corner, looking thoroughly debauched and like he was enjoying this fact immensely.

“I could mess up your hair a bit,” Luvander said doubtfully, and held up his hands in a defensive gesture when Ivory just snarled something incoherent in response.

It was all fun and games when the first airmen started to disappear via the various staircases. Niall had been the fastest, after him was Compagnon – giggling demurely behind his cupped hand – and then, surprisingly, Merritt, who was being led by a kind, easy-going blonde and even managed to keep his fidgeting to a halfway acceptable level. Before he was gone, he glanced back over his shoulder over to where Evariste was watching these proceedings with narrowed eyes, and it took only about half a minute for Evariste to pick a girl and vanish with her after that.

Amery was still deep in discussion with his companion as Raphael swept the cheerful piano player off her dainty feet, and Ivory made a point of watching Ace instead, who by then had relaxed considerably and was entertaining two girls on the sofa by recounting one of his reckless adventures in great detail.

It wasn't until Amery had left that Ivory noticed Jeannot smirking at them from the other end of the room, though. Ghislain and Magoughin didn't seem like they were here for business today, but they were obviously well acquainted with most of the ladies, and somehow, those few other clients who had been filling up the room earlier had all gone, and no new ones were forthcoming.

“Okay,” Luvander said, sounding anything but okay. “Okay, shit, I think we need a plan of action.”

That was when one of the girls who'd been dancing earlier sauntered over to them and draped herself over the arm of the sofa and half across Luvander's lap.

“You two gents are very quiet,” she said with a delicate smile on the kissed cherry of her mouth. “Did I hear right that you're new airmen?” Luvander nodded, and she readjusted her legs, sliding her stockinged ankles together seductively. “Well,” she purred, “isn't that fancy.”

Ivory watched as, somehow, Luvander stopped looking like he needed to go somewhere private and throw up, and stretched himself out into a smirk, one hand alighting gently just above the woman's ankle. He rubbed his thumb across her shin bone a couple of times, and said “mm, ain't it just,” with a quiver of his eyebrow which Ivory suspected he'd been practicing ever since they'd been introduced to Jeannot. He watched, fascinated, as this unexpected alternative Luvander unfolded in front of him like a magic trick.

“You look like a gent who knows how to talk sweet to a lady,” the girl's smile turned leonine, a flash of pretty white canines as she leaned in, and added “the name's Holly, since you didn't ask.”

“Luvander,” Luvander told her, “since you didn't either. How about you run and fetch some wine for the three of us? Must be thirsty work, dancing like you've been doing.”

“Mm, yes, I caught you watching,” Holly told him. “I'll be right back, then.”

“Do,” Luvander caught her fingers in his as she slid off his lap and brought them to his lips for a second, with a wink. Holly vanished and he turned to Ivory, his face comically morphing back into frantic alarm and full-speed panic. “Shit, shit, shit, shit,” he whispered, “fucking shit fucking bastion fuck, Ivory, what happens now?”

Ivory stared. “You seem to be doing just fine,” he pointed out. “Where did that come from?”

Luvander shrugged, fidgeted, fiddled with the buttons on his shirt sleeves and looked chastened. “Got sisters,” he mumbled. “Ladies aren't difficult. Just. I don't want to... you know? I can play the game if I have to, I know how to _talk_ to them, I know what they like _hearing_ , but this isn't, I mean.” He took a short, deep breath and his cheeks ran pale, and _here it comes_ , Ivory thought wryly, _confession o clock, like nobody's noticed already._

“Luvander,” he raised an eyebrow. “It's fine. You don't want to have sex with a prostitute, whatever. Why don't you just... not have sex with a prostitute, then?”

“Well I can't now, can I? I can't not now, now _she_ thinks I'm going to and I was just – I just wanted to – I thought if everyone saw, I mean, no, well, I don't know what I thought, I _panicked_ ok, it's a knee-jerk reaction, I didn't have a _choice_.”

“Flirting is your default response?”

“Well,” Luvander scowled at him, “You try having five big sisters and see if it wouldn't be yours, too.”

“I only have two big brothers,” Ivory muttered darkly. “My default response is pretending I'm invisible.”

“That explains a lot, actually,” Luvander said wisely, and then shut up nervously when Holly came back with a bottle of wine and a tall redhead in tow.

“Brought ya something,” she announced, winking at Ivory. “This is Aria. All the quiet ones like Aria.”

~

The last thing Luvander saw of Ivory that night was a deeply unsettled look over his shoulder when Aria led him out of the room. Luvander tried to convey his own feelings on the matter – namely, sheer, unabridged panic and horror – by doing a terrible, grimacing mimicry of a grin and a thumbs-up while Holly was busy with the wine. He then downed two glasses in short succession, flirted outrageously for another five minutes, and made sure to smirk and wink at Jeannot as he and Holly passed him standing sentinel by one of the staircases.

“Do all the airmen have such good manners?” Holly asked him delightedly when Luvander held the door open for her.

“I'm afraid not, you're just the millionth lucky customer,” Luvander found himself replying cheerfully and wanted to bash his head against the wall for this stupidity. Holly wasn't a customer, _he_ was, and he’d better start acting like it, or the whole charade would be up.

Not that this wouldn't be the case anyway if Luvander continued to fall head over heels for every single good-looking man he encountered, and precisely none of the women.

Holly lit some candles around the room, humming softly to herself and swaying her hips in tune with the music. It was the same song that Raphael's blonde girl had played on the piano earlier, and Luvander was painfully reminded of an occasion two days ago, when Niall had made up a whole new set of lyrics to it in the common room, draped carelessly over Amery and Raphael on the couch in front of the fire while his hair was still wet from the shower.

He couldn't do this.

“Holly,” he said, sober now, all of the flirting gone from his voice. “There's... something you should know.”

“What's that, sweetheart?”

“Oh, just,” he paced over to the window and twitched at the curtains, trying so hard to think quickly that he couldn't think anything at all besides _I just really do like your hair ribbon_ and – well – honestly, if he pitched it right that would probably tell her all the things he couldn't. “It's only. Well. Huh. Did anyone ever tell you about, er...”

“Ohh,” Holly breathed, sashaying up behind him and ensnaring his waist with her arms. “First time? Don't worry, handsome, I won't tell a soul.”

“Well,” Luvander panicked more, his heartbeat jangling somewhere in his stomach. “Well, yes. And also no.”

“Interesting,” Holly hummed against the back of his ear and Luvander shivered, and neatly stepped sideways out of her embrace. Holly put on hand on her hip and pouted. “You're a slippery one,” she noted, “full of surprises.”

“Haha,” Luvander didn't feel like laughing at all, and the sound was brittle and choked, false like Amery's promises not to tease Raphael. “Ha, hmm, yes, well. Huh. Holly, I – I just – can we, I mean, how would you feel about... can we, would you mind if we didn't but said we did?”

Holly shrugged one shoulder. “Sure, darling. Whatever you want. Not sure as to who you think I'll be telling anyhow. What goes on behind these doors only gets to be anyone else's business if it's something unpleasant. Even then, if unpleasant's what you asked and paid for, so be it.”

“What, um. What exactly do you mean by, well.” Luvander swallowed, perching nervously against the window ledge. Thick, cranberry-red velvet curtains shut out the evening, weighty, lush fabric at his back. “Unpleasant?”

Holly had turned away, and threw him a smirk over her shoulder. In the candlelight, her hair looked like it was tumbled from warm, rich hot chocolate. “Try me,” she suggested, adding “oh, not like that,” when another wave of molten panic flickered across Luvander's face. “Let's play a game, Airman Luvander. You tell me something unpleasant and I'll tell you how much it'll cost.”

“I don't want to do anything unpleasant,” Luvander squeaked.

“Did I say anything about following through?” Holly wound herself around one of the tall bedposts, hooking on leg up and pressing the heel of her little black shoe into the sheets, giving him another flash of her ankle. “You've paid for a nice neat fuck and you'll get that if you want it, or less if you prefer and nobody'll be any the wiser. But if less _is_ what you prefer, well. We've still got to pass the time some way, and I for one don't fancy sitting around staring at the walls, do you?”

“No,” Luvander said, swallowing down the panic. “Yes. Right. So do, um. Does that happen very often – people, um, preferring less than what they've paid for?”

Holly shrugged and fiddled with some of the lace on her blouse. “Sometimes,” she said. “Don't worry, you're not such a special snowflake. Just wasn't expecting it, what with you sweet-talking me back at the reception room and all. Usually it's Aria gets the ones who prefer less, cos they're all quiet and scowly like your friend out there and got dragged here by their mates thinking they're doing 'em a favour.”

“Yes, well,” Luvander muttered, still on the windowsill with his hands stuck in his pockets and one leg dangling and tapping against the wall. “I daresay you're not wrong about him.”

“'s why I went and fetched Aria,” Holly grinned. “Like if it's your first time, it don't matter who you pick, right, cos we're all good at that sort of thing, and we're all happy to do it, seeing as it's usually over very quickly, if you get my drift. Less work for the same amount of money, you see. But Aria's got this...”

She snapped her fingers in the air, and Luvander couldn't resist saying “je ne sais quois?” which just made him sound like the biggest fucking wanker, so he clamped his lips shut and only shook his head when she asked what that was supposed to mean.

“Anyway,” she went on, “puts them at ease, you know. And she's a fine one to waste a little time with if that's what you're after. She'll even do the whole bed creaking and moaning your name thing if you need someone to overhear. Even I sometimes can't tell if she's faking it, and I should know cos...”

An odd look flitted across her face then, as if she was half angry, half amused with herself for saying that.

“But speaking of,” she said abruptly, and pulled a tube of lipstick out from between the folds of her skirts. “We need to loosen up that tight collar of yours a bit, Airman Luvander, or people are gonna start questioning my skills.”

“What,” Luvander's chest clenched up cold again, “what did you, ah, have in mind?”

“Oh,” Holly rubbed her lips together and squinted at herself in the mirror over the fireplace. “How 'bout you just trust me on this one? I'm not going to touch anything you want left alone, promise.”

She sidled over and sat Luvander down on the edge of the bed, coming in close until she was bracing his legs between her knees. Her fingers buried themselves in his hair and rubbed at his scalp, little circular motions which felt... nice, actually... and Luvander closed his eyes as she gently tilted his head back and rubbed harder at the back of his skull. Then, she tugged, a sudden vicious yank on his hair followed by a series of intricate yet messy hand movements. His hair was longer than usual lately, his remission from the military training after Yesfir had chosen him had sparked a tiny streak of crimson rebellion, and Luvander had decided to break all the army-centric rules: growing his hair out and not polishing his boots every night. He'd expected to have to pull everything back together when the dragon corps training started, but to his surprise Chief Adamo didn't give a rat's arse what they did with their own bodies so long as they could do the job and not die. Or so he'd told them the first day they'd met. So Luvander had kept the longer hair because he liked the feel of it on the back of his neck. He'd gone back to boot polish though, because he also liked shiny black toes.

Holly's fingers abandoned his hair and made their nimble way down to his collar, working buttons through their holes with a perfunctory ability that reminded Luvander she had, of course, done this a thousand times before, probably for much more receptive men. “Are you, um, are you going, are you doing _all of them_ ,” he yelped suddenly, wriggling backwards.

“Oh, stop being so precious,” she snorted, “of course I am. Ain't nobody gonna believe we've been fucking if your shirt's still tucked into your pants, Airman.”

She put her mouth on his neck then, and Luvander's blood crystallised into ice water in his veins. “Holly, please,” he whispered, hoarse and desperate, fingers flexing in the silk sheets underneath him.

“Yeah, that's more like what they usually say,” she laughed against his skin, sliding her lips around to his throat. “Stop your fretting, I'm just leaving you some friendly evidence so you can boast to your boys about how nice my mouth is.”

“Right,” he swallowed, abruptly remembering Matthew from the farm again and his mouth in the stables, the scent of dry, sweet fresh hay and cracked, hard earth hanging in the air between their mouths. “Are you, er, is that – enough, then? To convince them?”

Holly sighed, swung herself out of his lap and curled up on the bed next to him, nipping her fingers at the inside of his elbow so he bent it fast, lost his balance and tumbled down next to her. Holly grabbed him close and ran her fingers into his hair again. “Let me tell you a story, Airman,” she purred, “about a guy whose mates took him to a brothel because they thought if he just got himself laid with a nice girl who knew what she was about, he'd stop making big ol' moony eyes at the man he bought his coffee from every morning. Let me tell you that story, about how that fella thought it was the worst night of his life right up until the pretty whore he'd paid for said she was shit hot at pretending, 'course she was, she'd pretended enough good times to get well paid and a nice rep, hadn't she? Let me tell you 'bout how she and that man made good friends, and he brought her flowers and hair ribbons and sundries that made her smile and made his friends think he was dead sweet on her, all the while he was biting the pillow with the coffee fella and nobody any the wiser. Let me tell you about that, hmm?”

“You,” Luvander said quietly, and breathed in the lemony vanilla warmth of Holly's perfume, “you want me to bring you flowers?”

~

Ivory woke up the next morning feeling hollow and hungover even though he'd barely had half a glass of wine the night before.

His other room mates were, thankfully, all still passed out on their beds, with the exception of Amery, who hadn't made it to the top bunk and was sleeping with his legs crossed on the floor and his arms and head on Niall's mattress, mouth open and hair uncharacteristically askew. Ivory climbed down from his own bed, careful not to make a noise, even though that was probably unnecessary judging by the collective snoring going on around him, and tiptoed past Raphael, who had the annoying habit of kicking his blankets off in the night and sleeping sprawled out with his shirt rucked up and his trousers dangerously low on his hipbones. For a man who was so squeamish about being naked in the same room with three others, he was astonishingly exhibitionist in sleep.

After a cold shower, Ivory felt a little less like he might faint on the spot, but still sore and tired, so he made his sleepy way to the mess hall for a cup of tea. It was, thankfully, empty – even chronic early risers like Niall seemed to break their habits every once in a while to sleep in, it seemed, and Ivory slid into a seat, propped his heels on the edge of the chair and reeled his knees in, and sipped at his tea, staring forlornly into space.

He jumped when someone plonked himself down in the seat beside him, but it was only Luvander, nursing a cup of coffee and a plate of buttered cinnamon toast that he placed between them on the table like an offering. Ivory poured himself more tea and took a tentative bite out of a slice, surprised when it actually made him feel a little better.

“So,” Luvander said. There were still faint traces of lipstick on his neck, and Ivory's mouth twisted bitterly sideways at the discovery. “Did you, um. Also get a bedtime story from, er, Aria?”

Ivory blinked, staring confusedly at the lack of toast in his hand and the teacup that was already half empty again. Thinking of last night made his spine crawl and his hands twitch, but it also made him inexplicably hungry.

“No?” he said finally, and stuck another piece of toast in his mouth to stop any more words from forthcoming. He half wished he could go home and curl up against Sebastian's side on the sofa with his cat and a pot of proper green tea and just not say anything all day, but for one thing, home was too far away, and for another, Maxwell and Sebastian would surely coax the whole sorry story out of him in a matter of minutes.

As Luvander seemed currently intent on doing.

“What happened?” Luvander muttered, nudging him gently with his elbow. Slowly, the mess hall started to fill with other hungover, though overall rather cheerful airmen, who for once were keeping the noise down to an almost acceptable level and chatted amongst themselves about the night before rather than starting food fights and ruining the paintwork on the walls with gouge marks. Ivory almost would've preferred the usual ruckus, though, because then he wouldn't have had to overhear their conversations about the girls they'd been with and what, exactly, they'd done with them and how.

“Nothing,” he told Luvander on the brisk breeze of a long sigh. “Just... nothing.”

“Did you want anything to happen?” Luvander asked him carefully, pushing his toast around in circles on his plate. “I just, I mean. I wasn't sure.”

Ivory sighed again and stared without really seeing across the mess hall where Niall was fidgeting the details of last night out of Merritt, who looked even more awkward than ever but, nonetheless, relieved in a pink, cheerful sort of way. “Not particularly,” he confessed, and picked up another slice of toast, thought about eating it and then put it straight back down again. “You've got lipstick on your neck,” he added, flatly, and left.

He'd liked Aria, in as much as Ivory liked anybody. He liked her musical name and the thick curls of her autumnal hair. She was classically Volstovic in all the ways that Ivory wasn't: firm and strong-shouldered with red hair and green eyes. When she'd led him up to one of the bedrooms her hand in his had been wide and friendly and decisive, the sort of hands that Ivory could imagine knew their business very well and took no shit, ever. He approved of that, and had flexed his own long, bony fingers self-consciously in his pocket.

“I'm not going to sleep with you,” he'd told Aria as soon as the door was shut, because nobody could overhear and Ivory didn't like conversation and didn't want to have one.

“Fine with me,” Aria shrugged, and sat down to unlace her boots. “As long as you're not lodging a complaint along with that.”

“No,” Ivory shook his head. “No complaints.”

And that had, simply, been it. Aria had sat on the wide window ledge, one bare foot propped up against the sill while her leg trailed down the wall, toes brushing the carpet. She'd smoked a thin, fragrant cigarette, something light and floral which Ivory didn't actually hate the smell of, and she'd courteously blown the smoke out the window, too. They'd left the lights out, save for a candelabra on the mantelpiece which guttered low, wax making a slow descent to pool around the base of the candles. Ivory leaned against the wall and watched the light pick out filaments of gold in Aria's hair.

Before he'd left, she'd run her palm down his cheek and tipped herself right up on her toes to press a tiny kiss against his cheekbone. “Next time you want to stand around and not sleep with someone,” she whispered, “you come and ask straight for me, darling.”

Ivory didn't plan for there to be a next time, ever.

He found his alcove again, the one where Raphael had sat with him yesterday and offered him chocolate. It was stupid, of course, but he sat down anyway and tugged the crumpled letter out of his pocket, smoothing it out across his knees and staring down at the elusive words. He was craving the soothing rumble of Maxwell's voice, the protective swipe of his broad hand between his shoulderblades, and the cling and clatter of Sebastian making tea in the kitchen and whipping up a batch of ginger apple scones that were more ginger than scone and had a dusting of cinnamon on top. His eyes were dry and itching, and he rubbed at them angrily, even though he _wasn't_ crying. They had no business giving him trouble today on top of everything else.

“Ah,” someone said lightly like the first pitter-patter of a summer rain, “I was hoping I'd find you here again.”

Startled, Ivory nearly tore the letter in two trying to fold it back up so Raphael couldn't see it as he sat down beside him on the floor once again. He looked tired, but not in that acute, bruised way that Ivory was feeling himself; more content and sated, at peace with the world. Ivory envied him that and didn't say anything.

“Did you get another letter?” Raphael asked curiously, peering at the sheaf of papers clutched in Ivory's hand. “I thought they only brought the mail on Saturdays...”

“They do,” Ivory forced out between clenched teeth.

“Ah,” Raphael said again, and they sat in silence for a while.

“Is... everything alright with your brother?”

A cold coil of nausea and anxiety slithered through Ivory's belly at those words. Maxwell's handwriting didn't seem hurried or smudged, but then it never did, and he hadn't even contemplated the possibility that the letter might contain bad news. His hands itched to spread the parchment out again and _look_ , search for words he might recognise, any hint of a wavering hand perhaps, small clues as to whether the writer had been okay as he'd penned the words.

“I don't know,” he found himself whispering instead, clamping his hand tighter around the letter. “I can't actually read.”

He couldn't bear to look at Raphael as he said it, not having seen the way Raphael had practically quivered with delight upon finding books in the common room, or the way he curled himself around them when he chose one to read, a circle of limbs and paper and contentment. Ivory had noticed, yesterday, the hungry way Raphael's eyes had swallowed down the words in his own letters, a linguistic feast delivered just for him. He'd met people who liked books and words the way that Raphael did before now. They always pitied him.

Ivory hated being pitied.

Except then Raphael put a hand against his elbow and said “lots of people can't read. Would you like me to – I mean, I know it's private but I could just... check? That it's not bad news?”

It was tempting, and also terrifying. Ivory thought about all the things which Maxwell's letter _might_ contain, and his stomach clenched at all the ways that could be bad. And then he imagined Raphael reading those things and the way his face would drift into that snowy, thin, worried expression Ivory had caught a few glimpses of this week when Ace was being especially reckless, or when Raphael had thought Amery might genuinely be about to make origami penises with Niall from the pages of one of his precious books. “Maybe later,” he said, gripping the envelope tighter between his fingers. He needed to go and find the piano.

“Wait,” Raphael said as Ivory got up. “I just... I could teach you, if you wanted. To read, I mean.”

He sounded... hopeful, somehow, and Ivory stopped for a moment to process this.

“In exchange for what?” he said, hating how his own voice sounded hopeful, too, and strangely tremulous.

“Nothing,” Raphael said quietly. Whatever had lit up his inflection before was gone now, replaced by something like bitter, over-steeped tea. “I mean you don't have to pay me or anything, I wouldn't mind doing it. I taught both my siblings back home. It's no big deal.”

“Yes it is,” Ivory hissed, glaring sharply, and Raphael winced.

“Alright, how about this, then,” he said, and pushed himself up off the floor. Ivory was a little taller than him, but Raphael had more bulk, and right now Ivory felt like a cornered cat. “How about I teach you to read and write, and in exchange, you play me a song of my choosing on that piano every night.”

Ivory bristled, well aware that he was being humoured, but Raphael was looking hopeful again, his face awash with exhaustion and vulnerability, and then he said “please” in a very small, tightly curled up voice that sent a jolt of unfamiliar longing through Ivory's stomach, and through the confusion, Ivory found himself saying “okay”.

He hated himself.

 


	3. Lesson Three: Words, Words, Words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please Note: Rating changed for this chapter, it is NSFW :)

It was the third day of their second week when Luvander interrupted Ivory's pre-dinner nap, letting himself into Ivory's dorm and nudging himself on to the end of the bed, stealing the bottom of Ivory's blanket and tucking it around his knees so that it made a taut fabric wall between their legs. “What,” Ivory scowled.

“Ivory,” Luvander whispered, clutching at the hem of the blanket. It inched fractionally closer to his chest and Ivory made a grab for it. “He keeps _talking_ to me.”

“What,” Ivory said again, scrabbling as Luvander tugged at his blanket again and he lost another inch.

“ _Niall,”_ Luvander hissed, glancing around to make sure he wasn't somehow also in the room, lurking and grinning and ready to jump out from behind the door yelling “surprise!” like he'd done to Raphael two nights ago when Raphael had been returning from the showers. He'd squeaked and dropped his towel and Niall had thought it was the best thing ever. Ivory had been trying not to think about that. “He just, he won't leave me alone? Yesterday he decided he was going to be my running mentor,” Luvander gave Ivory's blanket another yank and Ivory growled, but failed to stop the inevitable loss of warmth from his shoulders. Luvander tucked it in around his own chest and continued: “it was horrible, he just jogged along next to me trying to be _encouraging_ and all he was being was _distracting_ and, ugh, Ivory, _ugh_ ,” he said again, with emphasis. “And I know you didn't bother with breakfast yesterday, but I wish you would because he _sat next to me and stole all my toast and talked and_ ,” he pulled the blanket again and curled his toes up next to Ivory's leg. “Why,” he whined, “why is he so...”

“Annoying?” Ivory suggested, feeling annoyed. “Awful? Disturbing?”

“Yes,” Luvander moaned, “annoyingly attractive, awfully delicious, disturbingly dreamy.”

“Huh,” Ivory raised an eyebrow and gave up on the blanket, shoving it all down the bed towards Luvander, who ignored what he hadn't already stolen. “There it is.”

“There it is what,” Luvander said, a frown tugging on his eyebrow like a clothes-peg.

“Nothing,” Ivory sighed. “Why were you talking to me, again? Because unless you want me to stab him, there's precious little I can do for you.”

“Nooo,” Luvander moaned, wrapping himself up even further in the blanket and lying down by Ivory's feet, squeezed up into a tiny ball of misery. “No stabbing, he's too pretty for that.”

The door opened then, and Ivory was glad he'd left most of his clothes on earlier, because he did like to sleep naked, and it would've looked very suspicious if he'd been found naked in his bed with Luvander while none of his other room mates were in.

“Oh, hello, Luvander,” Raphael chirped, far too cheerful for his own good as per usual, and dumped an armful of books on his already overcrowded bed. “What are you guys doing? Are we having a sleepover?”

“We were talking about stabbing Niall,” Ivory informed him blandly and picked at some of the chipped paint on the ceiling with his fingernail. Luvander made a quiet wail somewhere underneath his layers of blanket.

“I never know if you're joking when you say things like that,” Raphael grumbled. There was some shoving and shifting on the bed underneath, and then Raphael's head popped over the top of Ivory's mattress, his curls sticking up on the right side and a smudge of ink on his nose.

“Well, I'm not,” Ivory sighed and sat up. He was never going to finish his nap now, with these two nuisances beleaguering him.

“He really isn't,” Luvander piped up, slowly peeling his face out of the blankets again. “Where, um, where is Niall, anyway?”

“He went to town with Amery and Evariste, I think,” Raphael said. Ivory had to tug his hands away from where they were playing with the sheet on his bed, because that was just not appropriate, even if he never did anything other than sleep in it.

“Oh,” Luvander said thickly, and hid his face again.

“I thought you wanted to be rid of him?” Ivory asked. Luvander made another waily sound and flopped his arms and legs around on the bed, nearly hitting Raphael in the face.

“Why does he want to be rid of Niall?”

“Because he's, what was it again? Annoyingly,” Ivory started with the twisted beginnings of a smirk, and Luvander actually smacked him on the shoulder.

“ _Annoying_ , yes, he's so annoying,” he hissed, his cheeks pink like cherry blossom peeking through frost.

“You should try rooming with him,” Raphael sighed, resting his chin on Ivory's mattress, “seriously, right Ivory? He surprise nakeds you and never stops talking and tries to initiate wanking competitions.”

“Please,” Ivory scowled at the ceiling, “I'd hoped we were all violently repressing that, not just me.”

“Oh, you were awake,” Raphael said sadly. “I thought you were asleep for that one.”

Ivory said “nope,” very slowly and deliberately, popping the p between his lips like a cherry stone.

“I take it your room mates are well behaved and peaceful by comparison?” Raphael turned to Luvander, valiantly pretending he was not blushing.

“Well,” he grimaced, “Ace tries to kill himself at least five times a night, and Merritt nearly sleep fidgets the mattress off the bed and Evariste wakes him up basically every hour to complain about that, so I don't know if peaceful is the right word. But I mean, there's no... wanking... or, or surprise, um, naked? So far?”

“ _So far_ ,” Ivory took sardonic pleasure in echoing, just before Raphael yelped and fell off the side of his bed. Luvander actually winced in sympathy at the impact and Raphael's pitiable moan from where he was now sprawled out awkwardly on the floor between the bunk beds.

“Oww, that hurt,” Raphael whimpered. “I think I fell on a book, fuck damn it.”

Ivory sighed, but secretly enjoyed the high-pitched little noises – purely out of spite because his nap had been so rudely interrupted, of course.

~

Their second week faded into the obscurity of more team exercise, navigation classes and dragon mechanics, as well as strategy and battle planning and manoeuvres with Chief Sergeant Adamo. Most of the boys went to bed exhausted both mentally and physically, and the bickering in the mess hall dwindled, as did the rowdy common room banter. Ivory hadn't found time, he told himself, to take Raphael up on his offer of reading lessons, and Raphael hadn't pushed it, thankfully.

And then it was Saturday, and a large cohort of tired airmen suddenly shook the week's exhaustion from their shoulders when someone mentioned the word 'girls'. Ivory tried to catch Luvander's eye across the common room – not because he felt like he needed a friend to opt out with him, but because some solidarity was always helpful in a situation like this. One man staying home because he was too tired was liable to be ridiculed into joining in; two or more could present a united front and be shrugged off as lost causes and promptly forgotten about. Ivory was selective about how often he believed in the notion of safety in numbers, but this was definitely one such case.

Unfortunately, Niall was lolling over the back of Luvander's armchair sweet-talking him into going along, and that, Ivory knew without bothering to watch further, was a done deal.

That didn't mean Ivory was going to go, though.

He managed to quietly slip away after dinner, when everyone was busy squabbling over the best shower stalls and space in front of the mirrors, pacing nervously, or loudly daydreaming about which girl they were going to try out this time. Luvander was still flanked by Niall and Amery and laughing somewhat hysterically over a no doubt tasteless joke Niall had just told, but Ivory ignored the traitor and hid himself in the dark, empty mess hall until the commotion in the entrance hall had died down. Then he went back to the common room, where he played a few aggressively cheerful melodies on the piano, leafed through some of the books that Raphael had managed to spread out on every available surface, and finally stretched out languidly in front of the fire for a well-deserved nap.

He had strange dreams about shoulders and curly hair.

In fact, when he woke again and saw exactly those shoulders and exactly that mop of curly hair malingering in the doorway and watching him, it took Ivory a moment to realise that he wasn't asleep anymore, and that Raphael was really here, his expression smudged in the low light.

“What,” Ivory croaked, not quite ready to sit up just yet. All his limbs were sleep-heavy and screaming in protest at the mere thought, even his hands just twitched miserably against the sofa cushions and stayed where they were.

“Sorry,” Raphael immediately said. He was tugging on the sleeves of his nice leather jacket, a nervous habit he often displayed, and shuffled his feet on the doorstep. “I didn't mean to wake you up. I just came to get my book.”

“Your book,” Ivory echoed and looked around pointedly at the stacks of books everywhere, “which book. I believe you're currently reading about ten?”

Raphael chuckled and glanced down at his boots, which were still glistening with a tracery of raindrops. Ivory had seen him leave with the others, but it wasn't late enough yet for them all to be back. What, then, was Raphael doing here?

“Or,” he said tentatively, and traced a line in the carpet with his toe, “we could, maybe? You know?”

“I do not,” Ivory manically hoped he hadn't been sleep-talking.

“Reading,” Raphael breathed, and Ivory's shoulders untensed, his muscles shuddering against each other in a protest at the week's exercise, the interrupted nap and the relief that Raphael wasn't talking about something else. “That thing we talked about, me... helping... you.”

“Hm, about that,” Ivory swallowed, his tongue still too heavy to work out how to say _I really don't want to_. Besides. Maxwell's letter was still burning holes in his pockets every day, as he carried it around with him in case Amery or Niall got their hands on it. He frowned. The common room was dark and Raphael was almost silhouetted against the light from the hallway outside. “Didn't you go out,” Ivory asked, his lip curling against his teeth in undisguised distaste.

Raphael licked his lips and looked awkward. “The girl I wanted was busy,” he muttered.

Ivory violently hated everything again, and he tried to breathe slowly because he didn't have his knives on him right now and there was nothing to stab except Raphael anyway. He blinked, counted to three and swallowed a dry mouthful of rage; tried to focus on the light tangling through Raphael's curls and the dull, scratched comfort of his leather jacket, and heard himself say “ok then,” without meaning to at all, “ok, well, alright.”

He struggled to sit upright, muscles flaring hot and painful in his arms and back, then sank against the backrest and balanced his heels on the edge of the sofa again. Raphael bustled around the common room, gathering bits of spare parchment and uttering a little cry of triumph when he finally found an intact pencil stub down the back of Ace's favourite armchair. He threw himself down on the sofa next to Ivory, sitting far too close, and started writing down a series of neat, big letters and explaining about the alphabet and how they were going to work on each letter separately, starting with the most important ones.

So Ivory spent an hour pressed up against Raphael's shoulder, trying to focus on the atrociously wobbly A he was tracing again and again on the parchment in his lap while Raphael watched. Every time Raphael said something encouraging in that quiet, candle wax voice that he reserved for poetry and, for some reason, Ivory alone, a hot trickle of pleasure shivered down Ivory's spine and made his hand clench around the pencil stub and smear his letters beyond recognition. He grew so frustrated about this that he finally threw the pencil and parchment into the fire, got up abruptly, and stalked over to the piano.

“What's your request, then?” he bit out, slamming his hands down on the keys. Finally, something he was good at, and some distance between him and the minty, gingery smell of Raphael that made him want to lick... things.

“Um, what?” Raphael said, sounding almost hurt.

“Your request,” Ivory repeated through gritted teeth. “We agreed, remember?”

Raphael chewed on his bottom lip and stared into the fire for a while, a sad sigh wisping from the back of his throat when the last of the parchment curled into ashes. Then he requested the tune about the beggar and the wolf that his girl had been playing at the brothel the other week, and Ivory had to take a deep, fortifying breath through his nose before playing that one, and did so only with great distaste.

~

Niall had a lot of questions about Holly.

Luckily, having five older sisters meant that Luvander was no stranger to discussing all things feminine, and was able to spin a delicate, glittery web of absolute lies about her laughter, her perfume and her underthings. Niall coiled an arm around his shoulders in the carriage on the way to town and leaned in close, pressing his forehead against Luvander's temple in a way that was at once both intimate and horrifically uncomfortable, and Luvander had to bite his own lips together to avoid making a strangled, unhappy noise out loud. He was grateful that the carriage was dark and his coat was long. “Are you really sweet on her?” Niall was asking him in a low, honey-thick hum against his ear, his breath warm and whispery.

“Um,” Luvander swallowed, realised he was breathing far too fast and didn't know how to do anything about that, which didn't help _at all_ , and said “yes?”

“After one night?” Niall murmured in that same tone, and his hand on Luvander's shoulder twitched, fingers dancing against the fabric of his lapel. “Damn. She must've been good.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Luvander breathed raggedly, “she was, um. Exactly what I didn't know I wanted.”

“Fucking nice,” Niall laughed, and abruptly was gone again, out of Luvander's space, a head rush of cool air bristling up against his cheek instead. He breathed out slowly, held himself still, and wished the carriage would hurry up. Luvander very much was not thinking about what he'd do if Holly wasn't there or wasn't free. He didn't have a plan B. No Holly would mean he was, quite honestly, pretty fucked.

Niall stretched, and Luvander almost missed him announcing “I want that one Raphael had last time. He said she had the most incredible fingers, bet they're no match for mine though.” Across the carriage, Evariste laughed, and Luvander pressed his cheek up against the blessedly cool glass of the window, and wanted to cry.

Holly gave him a wave from a plush corner sofa as soon as they arrived, and Luvander immediately tipped his fingers at Niall and Amery in a smug little salute, and went to join her. “You're back soon, sweetheart,” she smiled as he leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. She had lace half-gloves on today, stretched over her knuckles and leaving her fingers free. “Did you bring me flowers?”

“Sort of,” he muttered, because he hadn't had time to get actual flowers, seeing as he hadn't been planning to come here in the first place. “I'll show you later. Can we get out of here?”

He threw a desperate glance back over his shoulder, where Niall and Amery were looking very impressed at his moves, and Holly laughed, tinkling like broken china and smoky like the last residue of tea at the bottom of the cup. She peeled herself elegantly off the sofa and led him up the same stairs they'd taken last time, and Luvander only just had time to feel miserable when he saw Niall make a beeline for Raphael's blonde piano player out of the corner of his eye before Holly swept him into one of the private rooms and started lighting candles again.

“So, about those flowers,” she said, excited like a little child, and Luvander pulled a neat bundle of shiny grey silk out of his pocket with a flourish. He'd originally bought the jewellery wrapped inside for one of his sisters, but had later found a hat for her instead and been saving the jewellery for another occasion, and since Holly had been so obliging the last time, and all the boys had pointed out her expertly composed just-shagged look with conspiratorial smirks and winks, he figured this was the best occasion he could hope for. There was a pair of earrings, tiny glass baubles with even tinier rosebuds encased in them, and a matching necklace, and Holly's eyes grew big as she unwrapped them, reminding Luvander, for a split second, of his other lady up in the dragons' pens.

“Oh,” she stuttered, nestling the earrings in the palm of her small hand and holding them up in the light. “These are... really beautiful. Thank you, Airman Luvander. I didn't know soldiers could have such good taste.”

Luvander snorted sadly.

“If I had good taste, ma'am, I'd've fallen in love with you instead of...”

He cut himself off, but Holly's interest was already peaked.

“Instead of?” she prompted, a predatory glint in her blue eyes like the reflection of a flickery candle flame.

Luvander sighed, and collapsed himself on to the bed, falling back against the pillows where Holly had curled up with him last week. Everything smelt new and fresh all over again, soft cotton and warm candlelight, and of course, that was all part of the game; each customer being granted the illusion of being the only one. “Can I tell you a story, this time,” he asked, patting the sheets next to him. Holly spread the scrap of silk he'd given her out on tiny wooden bedside table, and lay the jewellery on top reverently, touching one of the earrings with the tip of her index finger like it reminded her of someone precious. Her fingernail was petite and polished like a pearl.

“Go on, then,” she agreed, arranging herself next to him and nestling her cheek comfortably against his shoulder. “Does it have a happy ending?”

“No,” Luvander admitted.

“Oh, now come on,” Holly insisted. “That won't do. I like a happy ending. Maybe it's just your story just hasn't got one _yet_ , hmm?”

“I don't think so.”

“Well, let's hear it,” she patted the back of his hand encouragingly, and then left her palm there, smooth, creamy skin behind thin, dark lace. She stroked between his knuckles with her fingertips. “You never know, maybe I'll be able to think of a way it could have a happy ending next time you tell it.”

So Luvander cradled her close against his shoulder and told her about running away to join the army because his parents wanted him to get married, and then he went back and told her about Matthew the farm boy (although not exactly about the stables). Holly hummed and purred sympathetically, and worked her fingers in between his and squeezed his hand a few times when he thought about shutting up. It was easy, though, once he'd started. Luvander liked talking, but he'd never talked to anybody about these things; about the way another man's hips and spine could make his stomach fall out of its proper place, or about the things men's laughter did to his insides. He'd never had anyone to press against his shoulder and whisper all the secret things he was aware of: how the fresh cotton and liquorice scent of the barber shop turned him on, or the unholy thoughts he'd had about what stubble might feel like on the inside of his thighs.

“Mmhmm,” Holly smirked, and said “you're getting carried away with yourself, Airman Luvander. Do tell me it gets worse.”

“Of course it gets worse,” he groaned, “you did see the others down there, right? My brothers in arms? You did see how they are all very much men, and all very much handsome ones, and all very much here because they're interested in what you sell?”

“Oh, but my darling,” Holly purred, “how do you know there's not a one of them telling some other girl just this story, too? Because that's just the way you looked, waltzing in here and kissing my fingers with a nod up the stairs.”

“No, really,” Luvander wasn't going to allow himself to even begin thinking along those lines. “I've lived with them for two weeks now. I'd know.”

“If you say so,” she smiled, and he knew she didn't believe him, but those were dangerous waters and Luvander also knew himself, and knew he hadn't got a clue how to navigate his way through them if he did start down that route. “So, is there a particular one you've gone and got sweet on, then?”

There it was again, the same phrase Niall had used about Holly. Luvander desperately wanted to say no, because in truth he would happily have taken any of his new colleagues to bed in a heartbeat if he was what they liked. He wanted to say no because _sweet on_ wasn't the right way to say it, either. _Sweet_ implied something pleasant, some warmth, something tender and delicious that put sugar in your bones. Niall looked tender and delicious alright, but that didn't make Luvander feel any of those things, it just made him awkward and hysterical and increasingly frantic about discovery. And aroused. Constantly half-hard. It wasn't even painful any longer, not getting any opportunity to deal with that. After a fortnight, Luvander had forgotten what it was like to _not_ be distracted by the contents of his own trousers.

“I'm sweet on Jeannot's eyebrow,” he told Holly. “And on Raphael's curls. And Ivory's piano music and Ace's excitement, and Merritt's awkwardness and Evariste's sneery little pout. And I'm sweet on Ghislain's mountainous... Ghislain, and on Magoughin's humour and Compagnon's laugh and on Amery's shiny, shiny hair. And Niall.”

“And Niall, hm?”

“Yes,” Luvander sighed, tilted his head back against the pillows and took a long, hard stare at the ceiling. Holly didn't move, and the soft weight of her on his shoulder was a comfort. Her hair smelt like cinnamon. “Yes, and Niall.”

“Tell me about Niall, then,” Holly said, and so Luvander did. He told her about how cheerful Niall was in the mornings, about how he was always humming or singing or making up his own lyrics when he couldn't remember the original ones (or disagreed with them), about how Niall's laugh was outrageous and filthy and indecently contagious, especially when you were trying to focus on an important lecture or training exercise. He told her about Niall's habit of walking around naked and being supremely unconcerned about who saw him – and rightly so – and about how he was smarter than people gave him credit for, and had a real talent for imitating other people. He told her that, while Niall enjoyed pranks and jokes as much as the next man, he could also be kind, encouraging and helpful, and when he talked about his dragon, his body became loose and pliant as if coming down from an exceptionally good orgasm, and all Luvander wanted was to go back in time to Tuesday, when he'd accidentally fallen asleep with his head in Niall's lap and Niall had simply let him be like that for a blissful half hour.

“I see,” Holly said when he was finally all talked out. They were way over the usual time limit, but Luvander had already made up his mind about paying her far more than the standard fare anyway, and Holly took her sweet time with the lipstick and the hair-messing and the buttons like she'd done last time.

“So those other boys, yeah?” Holly went on, neatly plucking the top button of his shirt loose as she sat perched in his lap. “They never talk about that sort of stuff? I know plenty of guys who've done the most sordid things when they were away and cooped up with only soldiers like themselves, and they all think none of it's nelly so long as they're only doing it to pass the time and get their rocks off. Could use that to your advantage if your Niall's up for that sort of thing, maybe.”

“That's,” Luvander swallowed and ducked his head to watch the passage of her fingers as they worked his shirt out of his trousers again, hitches and wrinkles all part of the dance. “No. That's not how I want it.”

~

This was a big, fat lie of course. Luvander would take Niall any way he could have him, and if that meant having to go to the brothel again the week after just so Niall would lean in to murmur filthy nothings into his ear in the carriage again, Luvander would do just that, especially now that he had Holly to pour his heart out to.

It was all going splendidly, until the Saturday in question rolled around. Luvander had been lingering in the shower, waiting for Amery, Merritt, Ev and Raphael to finish in the other stalls and hoping that, since they were all going out, he might get to have the showers to himself for the five minutes he needed to finally, finally deal with a by now somewhat pressing problem while they waited downstairs. Unfortunately, he'd been wrong in assuming that Niall was already done with his shower, and so let out the most embarrassing squeak when a very naked Niall slapped the curtains cordoning off his stall from the others away and ducked under the spray with him.

“We're running late,” he informed Luvander brightly, squinting at his shampoo. “You don't mind if we share, do you? Won't be long. What is this stuff, anyway? Smells fancy.”

He closed his eyes and deeply inhaled the scent of Luvander's shampoo, then started rubbing some into his hair, whistling while all around them there was the sound of the other showers being switched off and bare feet padding towards the exit.

Luvander couldn't actually move.

He was naked, in the shower, with wrinkly fingertips and soap in his eyes and a raging hard-on, and the door slammed shut behind Merritt, and there was Niall, ostensibly oblivious to the fact that the other stalls were now unoccupied, singing loudly and rinsing Luvander's favourite shampoo out of his hair.

Luvander was going to die a painful, humiliating death, and it was not going to be pretty.

Except then he looked down, and noticed something that made everything so much better, and also so much worse at the same time: Niall was also hard.

“Are you asking for your sweet brunette again?” he asked Luvander suddenly, ducking his head forward under the spray to hand the shampoo back. “Already thinking about her, I see.”

“Uh,” Luvander managed, because what was he supposed to say to that, really, what was there even _to_ say to that? And if Niall asked him more questions about Holly now and he started thinking about her then there'd be even more complications, because his erection would disappear and Niall would notice _that_ too and the questions would, no doubt, turn very uncomfortable. “I,” he tried again, and the words got stuck in his mouth as Niall placed one hand on his hip and reached around him again for the soap, his cock pressing briefly against the small of Luvander's back.

“Oh, you weren't – were you?” Niall asked then, pausing where he was, with his hand against the swell of Luvander's hip bone and the whole length of him curved wet and slippery and warm against Luvander's back.

“Weren't – I mean, I wasn't – what?” he whispered, trying to remember how to breathe. The shower water hissed against the curtain behind them.

“Whacking one out now so you're not heading out with a loaded cannon, obviously,” Niall grinned, right up against his neck. “Here, let me help.”

Before Luvander could even unravel those words, Niall had shoved the soap back on to the shelf next to the taps and reached down to curl his fist around Luvander's cock, loose and easy and still slightly sudsy. “Happens a lot, you know,” he was murmuring, his beautiful mouth on Luvander's collar bone, lips like the silk sheets in Holly's private room. “You're making yourself smell fresh down there for your girl and you start thinking about what you'll be doing with her later and then boom, you're left with this to deal with, and you just know if you wait til you get there you'll only be good for the first five minutes.”

“Right,” Luvander gasped, and closed his eyes; then immediately opened them again because holy fucking _fucking_ hell, he wanted to watch this so he could remember it every night forever to the end of his days. Niall's fist was firmer now, smooth and comfortable and he'd immediately found a rhythm that Luvander suddenly realised, to his horror, he was automatically matching with his hips. Shower water pooled in the slivers of spaces between Niall's fingers, dashing away and down between his toes again with each stroke.

He'd been wrong about those five minutes, and Niall had been wrong about those other five minutes, because Luvander wasn't good for even that long. He managed to brace one hand against the wall and lean his head against his arm, and then Niall crooned “easy there” somewhere next to his ear and Luvander's legs buckled like the words had gone right into the backs of his knees, and he came, after what was probably less than two minutes but felt like half an eternity, and Niall chuckled delightedly and didn't stop teasing his cock until he was all done.

“That's better, eh?” he said, washing his hand off under the spray. “Now you're ready for the fun to begin.”

“Fun,” Luvander echoed faintly as he tried to keep himself upright and catch his breath at the same time. His head was spinning. “Right, yes, fun. Thanks.”

As far as he was concerned, he'd had enough _fun_ to last him for the rest of his life, but Niall only hummed “any time, Luv” and Luvander had to get out of here, now, so long as he could still walk. _Could_ he still walk? His knees were definitely still feeling rather trembly, but he made it past the curtains and over to the towel rack, and then all the way down the corridor with one of the towels – possibly Niall's, now that he thought about it – wrapped loosely around his waist and the rest of him dripping all over the floor.

“Luvander?” a quiet voice said, followed by a somewhat nervous looking Ivory who was carrying a stack of parchment and some pencils along with two cups of minty-smelling tea. “I thought you were going out?”

“I was,” Luvander heard himself saying, “am, I am, excuse me, I have to go and get dressed, Niall just got me off in the shower _shit buggery fuck_ I wasn't going to say that.”

Ivory nearly dropped the tea he was holding and stared.

“Niall... did what?” he asked slowly, and Luvander whimpered.

“I need to get dressed,” he said again, sounding miserable even to his own ears. “I've got... Holly, I need to talk to Holly.”

And with that, he made a run for his room, just in case Niall was done with his shower and would appear around the corner any minute now, _still_ naked, _still_ whistling, and _still_ gorgeous.

~

Ivory sat in front of the fireplace in the common room waiting for Raphael and mulling over Luvander's words for a long, long time. He drank his tea and rubbed his fingers over the parchment, feeling the paper crisp and dry under his skin. The common room grew dark around him, and he drank Raphael's tea as well, because it was going cold, and Raphael wasn't here, and he could make his own damn tea if he wanted more now that he'd kept Ivory waiting.

And waiting.

After he'd waited a full hour, Ivory picked up a pencil and traced a shaky letter A all by himself, and wished he had the rest of them so he could write _Raphael_ and then set the parchment on fire. Instead he stalked over to the piano and flexed his fingers out over some chords, played a few loud and slamming ones but the only actual tune he could think of was the one Raphael had asked him to play last week, the one the whore had played, and Ivory snarled at himself and got up, kicked the piano stool and then the sofa for good measure, and then ran into Ace in the corridor.

“Hey, Ivory, hi, how's it going, hey,” he breezed. “Whatcha doing?”

“Nothing,” Ivory snapped, and Ace lurched back from him like he was a badly behaved dog, and then reeled in again, grinning.

“Not scouting the ladies with the rest of our gallant messmates?”

“Just like you,” Ivory pointed out, the words astringent on his tongue.

“Yeah, didn't fancy it tonight,” Ace shrugged. “Want a game of cards? Everyone else is gone, I'm bored. Or we could take a walk up town and see if we can sneak in and see the girls, how 'bout that, you up for it? The _real_ girls, I mean,” he amended, “you know, the ones with wings and fire and foul tempers. _Our_ girls. No petticoats, no flirting, just good old exciting dragon smoke. Come on, I dare you."

“Okay,” Ivory said, surprising himself, because he was restless and angry enough to go along with anything so long as it involved fire.

The thing about Ace was that he talked a lot. Unexpectedly, this did not turn out to be a problem, seeing as how Ivory barely talked at all, and while he still kind of missed Raphael's scatter-brained stream-of-consciousness musings about poetry and life and whatever else annoying had caught his fancy that day, Ivory found he was soothed by the never-ending chatter, broken by authentic re-enactments and the occasional mouth explosion. The walk from the barracks to the infamous Airman building, which was still under construction, was a rather long one when you didn't have carriages taking you there, but it wasn't raining for once, and the night was a calming cable-knit of scratchy damp air and faraway, woollen sounds. Ivory felt some of the exhaustion that came from being cooped up with so many other people for so long slip away, and he breathed in deeply and stuck his hand in the pocket with Maxwell's letter.

They didn't actually make it into the building, let alone the dragons' pens. There were far too many guards posted around the area, equipped with dogs and lanterns, and even though Ace was seriously contemplating climbing the high fence that was topped with coils of barbed wire, in the end they had to go back home.

The first thing Ace did when they re-entered the common room, which was filled with a flickery red glow from a dying fire and a slumped and tired-looking group of airmen in various states of shirts buttoned up the wrong way, was jump up on a chair and announce: “Guys, guys, _guess what_! Ivory and I just went to see the _dragons_!”

There was a small commotion that mostly consisted of Niall and Amery complaining about why they hadn't been invited along on the adventure, which Ivory used to slip past the sofas clumped around the fireplace and sit down at the piano. He stroked the keys in a silent apology for his earlier behaviour, and looked up because he felt Raphael's eyes on him, noticing with a mixture of shame and malicious pleasure that Raphael was holding the parchment that he'd been scribbling his letters on earlier, a rather forlorn look in his eyes.

Ivory turned away again and began to play one of Sebastian's favourite pieces. They were always light and soothing, in contrast to the more serious, pompous arrangements preferred by Maxwell. Ivory himself didn't actually have favourites. He just enjoyed playing, putting his mind to that one thing only and blocking out everything else, like the fact that Raphael was slowly falling asleep in his armchair with Ivory's letters still clutched protectively to his chest.

Luvander was not among the returning debauched, and Ivory felt a twinge of something he didn't care for, because he was probably in a state somewhere. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the simple familiarity of the piano. They weren't his friends, not Luvander and not Raphael; Ivory didn't have _friends_ and what they did with themselves was nothing he cared about.

He played for a long time before he believed that, though.


	4. Lesson Four: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (Advice)

The following afternoon, Holly came to visit. Sundays were a respite at the end of the week's round of training, one quiet day to nurse hangovers and soothe sore limbs, the only day when the common room stayed quiet until the early evening; the only day that sleeping in was allowed, encouraged in fact. Breakfast was available until noon.

Nobody had received any visitors so far at the barracks. None of the airmen knew for sure how long they were to be staying there: ostensibly it was until the Airman building was finished and fit to live in, but nobody ever wanted to ask how long that was going to take. There were a handful of bunks up there, the older boys told them, having camped up there when they'd been going out on raids in the last bout of fighting, the one that had made the Esar and his advisors decide to speed up the recruitment process and get a full complement of dragons flying and airmen trained as soon as possible. For now, though, fighting was at a halt again, and before they were allowed to begin proper dragon flight training, there was this whole ridiculous team building and strategy training to be got through.

When one of the staff came to the common room to announce that Airman Luvander had a visitor waiting, there were obligatory catcalls and whistling from the assorted debris of boys who'd made their way down here instead of back to bed (or, in Merritt, Evariste and Magoughin's cases, out for a walk and some fresh air, which translated as _we are shockingly hungover and might need to collectively throw up_ ). Jeannot shot Luvander one of his unacceptable eyebrows and Ghislain spared him half a glance of mountainous concern; Niall, lolling with his legs and arms spread out wide over an entire sofa, gave him a wink like he already knew, and Luvander turned even pinker as he hurried out of the room.

Holly was waiting in the entrance hall in a pretty, high-collared and double-breasted coat in claret Volstovic red, a neat little hat to match, and the earrings Luvander had brought her nestled prettily amongst her curls. She looked uncomfortable, out of place, like something polished and perfected in a sea of tarnished silver. The attendant indicated a small sitting room just off the main hallway, cold and sparse with two armchairs and a little wooden table between them, no rugs or decorations; not even a fire in the grate.

The second the door was shut, Holly rounded on him and swore. “Don't go fucking disappearing halfway through like that,” she hissed. “I was fucking worried about you.”

Luvander seriously fucking hoped that no one had overheard that, but the little snicker outside the door just before a pair of boots disappeared down the hallway already told him he'd be subject to a barrage of jokes later, if the thing about Jeannot nursing healthy relationships with the staff was true, which it probably was.

“I'm... sorry,” Luvander whispered, too tired to even flirt. His eyes were still tender and his throat felt like he was trying to swallow down a mouthful of stones. He had, as Holly had so delicately put it, left halfway through yesterday, long before any of the other airmen had finished, and marched back to the barracks on his own, where he'd made a beeline for the rooftop and then had a good long cry in private like the cindy he was. He'd run into Raphael on the way back, but thankfully it had been too dark for Raphael to see his splotchy face, and Raphael had been too preoccupied to mumble more than a perfunctory “hello” before disappearing in the empty common room. None of the others had been back yet, and Luvander had scrubbed his face and gone to bed, where he'd fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion right away.

“You better be sorry, Airman Luvander,” Holly grumbled, squinting at him. Then she cupped his face in her hands and forced it upwards into the light. “Have you been crying?”

“Fuck,” Luvander swore, and rubbed self-consciously at his cheeks. He'd been hoping his red-rimmed eyes and pale complexion would count as symptoms of a particularly violent hangover, and so far, no one else had pestered him about them, but if Holly could tell so easily...

“You have, haven't you?” Holly crooned, stroking his jaw. “Poor baby. What'd he do?”

“Nothing,” Luvander moaned, because it was futile asking who she meant. She had of course already coaxed the story about what had taken place in the showers out of him the night before, but he'd also told her about being worried whether perhaps Niall had already been drunk and would come to his senses the next day, and blame Luvander for the whole incident.

He wanted to cry all over again.

“He's been the same as usual, maybe a bit less obnoxiously cheerful on account of being hungover, but... oh, Holly, what am I going to do? What if he tells anyone?”

“He'll incriminate himself just the same as you,” Holly said sternly, shaking her head. “You listen to me, Luvander. What he did was all on him, you had nothing to do with that. Some part of him must've wanted to, or he wouldn't've done it in the first place, yeah? So don't you start beating yourself up over it, petal.”

She winked and added: “Who knows, maybe you're lucky and it happens again, even.”

Luvander leaned his forehead against hers and breathed out. “You're right,” he muttered, “I'm being stupid. Would you like to go somewhere for tea? My treat.”

She looked a little sad then, and let go of his face, stroking one soft thumb down over his cheek.

“I got to get back, me and the girls have a new dance routine to practice. Maybe some other time, though. Will you come back next week?”

“Of course,” Luvander promised, leaning down to kiss her gloved hand. “Nice earrings, by the way.”

Holly preened and shook her hair out back over her shoulder so the glass caught the weak sunlight from the window and sparkled. “Came from someone special,” she told him.

Luvander allowed himself to feel better all the way back to the common room, where he abruptly decided he didn't want to look at any of his comrades, least of all Niall, and turned on his heel and went back to his dorm instead. Maybe if he slept for a bit, he'd wake up looking less like a monstrously emotional wreck.

Except, of course, he couldn't sleep. Luvander pressed his face against the cold cotton of his pillow and curled his fingers against the sheets; remembered just how Niall's fingers had looked wrapped around him in the shower, a haze of running water and arousal, everything slick and wet and over too quickly. He remembered Niall's mouth against his neck, the warm rub of words against his skin; the insistent press of Niall's erection against his back. Luvander pressed his lips together and closed his eyes, futilely willed himself not to get hard again. He already knew that didn't work, it hadn't worked when he'd been telling Holly and it hadn't worked when he'd woken up this morning after dreaming about it, and Luvander didn't actually dare to shower again yet, because hot water was probably ruined forever. He didn't even want to touch himself because it was only going to be a disappointment now.

By the time Merritt came in, still looking peaky with his freckles bold against the wax of his skin, Luvander was almost sort of subtly rubbing himself against the sheets, hating everything ever and wishing they were flight training already so he could at least have burnt off some excess energy with Yesfir. He'd only flown her once, of course, that day she'd chosen him, but – like all the boys – he'd never stopped thinking about the swooping tequila shot of adrenaline in his gut when they'd taken off, and the slap of icy wind in his face, and the thrill of seeing the whole of Thremedon shrink like a toy that would fit into the palm of his hand. He couldn't imagine that he'd be distracted and miserable with pervasive thoughts about Niall if he was flying. He couldn't imagine being able to think about anything at all except the sky and his girl, if he was up in the air.

“Are you, um, are you alright?” Merritt stammered, looking awkward in the doorway. Awkward, Luvander had decided, was Merritt's fidgety default. “I just – you look a bit, um. Not alright? And the guys said, well. Um. Never mind. But I just... wondered?”

“Of course I'm alright,” Luvander snapped before asking, feigning utter disinterest, “what did the guys say?” It wasn't Merritt's fault that people were talking about him, but Luvander felt like kicking something hopeless right now, and he couldn't kick himself.

“That, um,” Merritt twitched and coiled his fingers up together, hopped about a bit and took two steps toward his bunk and one step back. “That you had, um, a... visitor? A _lady_ visitor?”

Luvander sighed. “I did.”

“So, er. Are you – alright?” Merritt whispered.

“I had a lady visitor, Merritt, why would that imply I'm not alright? We've all been to the same place on Saturdays, you know where she's from, it's not like it was my mother calling on me.”

“No,” Merritt said, sadly, and finally made his way over to his bunk and sat uncomfortably on the edge, chewing his lip and twisting his fingers together in his lap, now. “No, I suppose not. But is, um. I mean. Well.” He stopped and scratched the back of his neck, and his cheeks turned flush, two little high points of bright pink up under his eyes. “Is _she_ alright? You've not. You know. She's not?”

Luvander wanted to cry again, suddenly, for completely different reasons now. Holly was far, far too good at her job, he knew that, but he'd never been entirely convinced that he was fooling anyone himself. “She's not pregnant, Merritt. If she is, it's honestly nothing to do with me,” he said, kindly this time, because Merritt looked terrified, no doubt worrying over the belated realisation that visiting whores sometimes came with a higher price than just their fee. “She wouldn’t know this fast, even if there had been an accident,” he grimaced. “Anyway, that's not what she came to talk to me about.”

“So,” Merritt frowned, “is she... are you... is she in love with you?”

Luvander actually laughed, this time. He felt the tightly locked gears of anxiety and guilt shift and loosen in his stomach, and decided that he might as well sit up, since he wasn't going to fall asleep any time soon, especially not now Merritt was awkwarding all over the place, which also meant that Evariste would probably show up soon. For all his complaints and temper tantrums, Ev got even more irritated when Merritt _wasn't_ there, and sooner or later always sought him out to berate him for one thing or another. He'd pitched a fit the first time Niall had suggested that deep down, he and Merritt were actually best friends. Luvander quite agreed with that assessment, but kept it smugly to himself.

“Of course she is,” he said breezily, running a hand through his hair as if he couldn't care less. “She's a prostitute, she gets paid to fall in love with me, for a couple of hours on Saturday nights. That's her job.”

He felt guilty for maligning Holly so easily, but if it stalled the tide of questions and put Merritt's mind at ease, so be it.

~

Raphael wasn't sure exactly why he felt so bad about going to visit the brothel instead of teaching Ivory to read, because it wasn't as if they had an arrangement specifically about Saturday nights. That had just been how it happened that first (and, so far, only) time. Ivory puzzled him, and Raphael liked puzzles. It was how he'd come to learn his letters in the first place, because books were little mysteries asking to be solved, stories that just needed unravelling. He'd felt the same excitement when he'd met Natalia as he had the first time he'd read a book from cover to cover, and when she'd asked him if he knew poetry Raphael's heart had been lost forever. Teaching someone else to read was another puzzle to be solved, because Raphael had realised when he'd taught first his brother and then his sister that you couldn't do it the same way every time. His brother had needed slow, methodical practice, lots of repetition and seeing letters as shapes and pictures that came together. His sister was more haphazard, trying to rush into words before she'd got the whole alphabet: impatiently seeking out what happened at the end when she'd barely got through the beginning. That way, Raphael had realised that people were puzzles who sometimes needed working out, too.

Ivory was his biggest puzzle so far. Of his dorm mates, Amery and Niall weren't mysterious at all – they were loud and brash and hilarious, and Raphael liked them in spite of the way they teased and joked and dragged him on ridiculous adventures and schemes he was never entirely sure he was up for. He liked them _because_ they were straightforward and simple and he knew exactly where he stood with them: he was the disastrous one who was going to be the butt of most of their jokes, but the minute it was someone _else_ doing the joking, Amery was going to punch their lights out.

What he liked about Ivory was that he had absolutely no idea what he thought about anything, ever. The discovery that Ivory couldn't read had sent a little glassy shiver of desperate anticipation right down into Raphael's stomach, curling his toes, because here was something he could do; some minuscule fact about the mystery which he could actually help with, and Raphael loved that. The day he'd found Luvander in Ivory's bunk, the two of them plotting Niallistic murder, had been even better, because that looked like Ivory had made a _friend_ , and Raphael could work with that. Luvander was slight and slippery, he looked fragile and like he wouldn't stay upright in a strong wind, but Raphael had seen him shimmy up a rope like he'd been born in a ship's rigging, and he'd watched Luvander morph into a smooth, sweet-talking piece of irresistible when they'd been to the whorehouse. An interesting man for Ivory to befriend. Raphael had resolved to study him.

And then there was this week, this Saturday, when he'd come home early after an hour with Maisie, his favourite piano-playing girl with the halo of hair the colour of candlelight and fingers that painted whole worlds on his skin when he asked her to, and Ivory was out, leaving a half drawn letter on the floor, and Raphael's stomach had hurt.

There were also two empty cups of tea on the floor beside the sofa, which made Raphael wonder for one horrendous second if Ivory had found someone else to teach him, but then he remembered that all the other boys were still at the brothel, except for Ace, who'd told him in no uncertain (but very cheerful) terms that he always signed documents with a lightning bolt because he couldn't write. So Raphael curled up in an armchair with the abandoned parchment and waited. He waited two hours, then he got up to make himself some fresh tea, met Luvander in the hallway outside on the way back, but didn't start wondering about why Luvander was back from the brothel when the others weren't until he was once again tucked into his armchair.

When Ivory finally came back, he didn't so much as spare him a single glance, and slipped away to the piano while the others crowded around Ace and his outrageous story about climbing barbed wire fences and dodging a hundred royal guards stationed outside the Airman building. Raphael watched as Ivory caressed the keys lovingly and shuddered, because all of a sudden he wanted those fingers to caress _him_ like that, maybe play with his curls and stroke his head as he fell asleep, like his mother used to do when he was little. Ivory played a light, unobtrusive melody while the others squabbled, and Raphael hugged the parchment to his chest and closed his eyes for a little moment, and when he opened them again, the fire had gone out, the room was dark, and everyone was gone.

There was, however, a blanket tucked in around him, and Raphael spent a long time wondering who among the others was responsible for this, because most of the time Niall and Amery were incapable of looking after themselves, let alone someone else, and neither Ace nor Merritt and Ev really seemed like the type, either, which only left Luvander and Ivory, one of whom had not been in the common room that night.

Very puzzling, indeed.

On Monday, Chief Adamo announced that they'd be starting flight training the next week. Naturally, the news provoked an influx of renewed energy and absurd antics, as if the excitement was a precursor to regression for most of the boys. Amery and Niall stepped up their pranks, and dragged Ace and Evariste into most of them too, meaning that Raphael and Merritt suffered most of the results. Luvander was violently teased about his girl, at which he tended to blush a lot and look uncomfortable, and Ivory continued to make sure everybody saw him sharpening a knife every few days so they'd leave him alone. A clever strategy, Raphael thought, and worried, and wondered whether there had ever been another person Ivory had looked at with the same devoted intent as he did those knives.

Ghislain, Compagnon, Magoughin and Jeannot weren't around much this fourth week, since Adamo wanted to run through manoeuvres with them in advance, so most of the training was physical, and a step up in dragon mechanics and maintenance. Raphael decided it was time he caught up with Ivory, because who knew what sort of things they'd be doing when flight training started, and maybe he'd want to take notes.

He found him on Tuesday afternoon, wrapped up in a sea of blankets under the stairs, fondling his still-unread letter from his brother. There had been a horrible, cold, muddy game of team tag in the grounds that afternoon, which Raphael had hated more than he hated sandwiches which didn't stay together or badly brewed tea, so he could only imagine how Ivory must have wanted the game to be over. Especially given how aggressive Amery and Niall were when it came to competition. Raphael had come in and showered for longer than necessary, trying to rake the mud out of his hair and the humiliation out of his bones, and then he'd gone looking for Ivory.

The thunder which had ended the team games outside with its lash of chilled rain and heavy, grumbling clouds echoed against the side of the stairwell as Raphael sat down a careful distance from Ivory.

“Are you alright?” he asked, because Ivory still looked cold, and he hadn't fared any better outside than Raphael had – although he hadn't at least been targeted by Amery for every single flying tackle.

“Fine,” Ivory bit out, and his fingers clenched up tighter around the worn parchment of his letter. It looked like it had been opened out a hundred times, smoothed over and refolded, enough to make the creases grow thin and faded. If Raphael didn't know better, he'd have thought it was a letter from a lover, read and re-read and re-read again, cradled beneath Ivory's pillow at night and in the pocket of his shirt all day so it was never out of reach. The thought made his ribs twist.

“I thought you might want to, um,” Raphael paused, searching for the best way to phrase it. “Pick up where we left off? With the letters, maybe?”

Ivory shrugged. “Sure.” Lightning flickered through the window across the corridor, streaking his already pale hair even whiter.

“Ok,” Raphael nodded, and looked at Ivory's fingers; wished he was bold enough to reach over and prise them gently away from the parchment, curving one knuckle after the next and easing them out long and loose, the way they looked when Ivory was at the piano. “Or, um – well, if you wanted, I could read something and you could follow the words? It might help,” he explained, “you'll see patterns and... um, things.”

Ivory nodded, short and sharp, and then his face flickered along with the lights. He pursed his lips up tight for a moment, frowned at himself and took a deep breath like he'd just made a very fierce decision. Raphael hoped it wasn't one about stabbing him. He almost yelped with surprise when Ivory thrust the letter towards him. “Just, go on then,” he said, furiously, looking at the floor. “It might as well be – and anyway, I should probably – I mean, I haven't heard anything else, so – and just,” he stopped, bit his lip and then shot closer as the lightning flickered again, right up into Raphael's space, all teeth and anger like a trapped animal. “Just don't you fucking dare tell anybody any of this,” he hissed, and Raphael squeaked and nodded frantically.

“No, of course not, I wouldn't, I – I, no, absolutely not,” he stammered.

“Right,” Ivory scowled, and backed off but didn't exactly move away. “Good.”

“Okay, then,” Raphael breathed, and cautiously opened the letter on his lap. “Ready?”

“Just fucking read it,” Ivory grumbled.

“ _Dear Ivory_ ,” Raphael read painstakingly, ignoring Ivory's impatient eye-roll. “ _Guess what momentous thing I found out via the Miranda Chronicle this morning_ – your brother reads the Chronicle, are you serious?”

“Don't even,” Ivory said, threateningly. Ever since Maxwell had taught himself to read, he'd insisted on buying every single newspaper he could get his hands on, including the ones which were not, strictly speaking, news at all – The Miranda Chronicle, The Margrave Review, etc. Celebrity gossip and fat political lies were, apparently, just as important to one's 'daily reading appetite' – whatever the fuck that was – as actual news.

“Interesting,” Raphael pretended he wasn't smirking and continued: “ _Guess what momentous thing I found out via the Miranda Chronicle this morning? There was an article about DRAGONS –_ that's capitalised by the way, do you see that, there's a word for you, very important.”

“Raphael,” Ivory said, and his tone would have been a lot more alarming if it hadn't a) been drowned out by another clap of thunder, and b) coincided with his cheek coming to rest on Raphael's shoulder.

“Sorry. _There's an article about DRAGONS and the appointment of the newest airmen to the infamous royal Dragon Corps, and there was something very interesting about that. I thought you might like to know that apparently you're one of them?”_ Raphael paused again and took a breath before glancing at Ivory and asking “Ivory, did you, er – did you _not tell_ your family about being an airman?”

“Keep reading,” Ivory told him, resigned now, “you're about to find out why.”

So Raphael kept reading. “ _All I can assume from this piece of scandalous and hilarious gossip is that either 1. you are pulling the most excellent prank on Sebastian and I, in which case, well done, very bloody funny, I'm impressed, he's impressed, now come home. Or 2. this is, in fact, true???_ Notice that gratuitous punctuation?” Raphael whispered, and Ivory pinched his wrist. “Sorry, yes, anyway. _The rest of this letter assumes that it's true. If it's not true, burn it and come home immediately. If it is true, read it and then come home immediately if convenient. If inconvenient, come home anyway._ He's demanding,” Raphael observed, “is he always this demanding?”

“He's always this convinced he's right about everything, if that's what you mean,” Ivory half explained, closing his eyes and summoning Maxwell's voice in his head. Raphael made his words sound a lot softer, calmer, and more musical than Max did. Then again, that was probably because Raphael was, generally, softer, calmer and more musical than Maxwell, even if he wasn't actually musical at all. Ivory inched closer as lightning flitted across the hallway again and kept his eyes closed so he couldn't see the storm. “Keep going. Since it's true, and all.”

“The next bit's all in capitals,” Raphael warned him. “That usually means shouting.”

“Sounds about right.”

“Ok. Here's what it says: _ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND WHEN WERE YOU PLANNING ON TELLING US YOU'VE SIGNED UP TO GET YOURSELF KILLED BY FIRE OR DRAGON OR WAR OR KEHAN MAGIC OR WHAT EVER YOU LIKE I AM SO UNHAPPY ABOUT THIS SEBASTIAN IS SO UNHAPPY ABOUT THIS WHEN YOU GET HOME WE ARE GOING TO HAVE WORDS WITH YOU LITTLE BROTHER;_ wow,” Raphael paused, “I see what you mean. Also, no punctuation at all, this is one long sentence. How long can your brother hold his breath?”

“Too long to drown him,” Ivory said.

“Huh. Page two,” Raphael carried on cheerfully, turning the parchment over. “We're still in capitals, how charming. _I KNOW YOU CAN'T READ THIS SO I'M ASSUMING YOU'VE ASKED SOMEONE ELSE TO – HELLO BY THE WAY IF YOU ARE ANOTHER AIRMAN PLEASE TELL MY STUPID ASS LITTLE BROTHER TO RESIGN HIS FUCKING COMMISSION AND GET HIMSELF HOME IMMEDIATELY WHERE THERE ARE NO DRAGONS AND NO FIRE AND NO WARRING WELL A BIT BUT NOT THE HE'S-GOING-TO-DIE-NOW KIND SO TELL HIM._ Full stop,” Raphael grinned, “finally.”

Ivory said “ugh,” and pointed at the second paragraph on page two, where the capitals ended. “Are we there yet?”

“Well spotted,” Raphael hummed, and Ivory sighed and pulled his blankets up to his chin. It was clear now that there was probably no bad news in the letter, at least nothing really bad, but now that they'd started, Ivory didn't actually want Raphael to stop, because even if Maxwell was the most annoying person in the world, it felt so good to finally get to hear his words and have a piece of home.

“Good. More.”

“Seems like _demanding_ runs in the family,” Raphael muttered, then coughed and quickly read on. “ _That said, Sebastian and I are of course horrendously proud of you for getting yourself picked by one of those dragons. According to the Volstovic Courier, they seem to be moody, capricious beasts who don't really like anyone, which sounds a lot like you, actually, so I can see how that happened at least._ ”

Raphael hid a grin in his sleeve at that part, and Ivory elbowed him in the side for good measure and quite enjoyed the little squeak that produced.

“ _Sebastian wants me to tell you that he's also very proud of you for willingly putting yourself through the ordeal of sharing a barracks with a bunch of no doubt rowdy, filthy soldiers – no offence to the person reading this – but I for one am not convinced that you'll last more than two days before knifing someone. (If you could be so kind as to inform us of the state of things in a letter – perhaps your kind reader could pen it for you – I would be much obliged! Sebastian and I have a bet going on the exact amount of time, you see.)_ ”

“Ha,” Ivory burst out, feeling inordinately pleased with himself, seeing as he'd made it over three weeks without casualties already. Raphael had a look on his face that was half scared, half fond, and Ivory quickly settled back down against his side and gestured for him to read on.

“ _Now here is a list of Very Important Things You Must Do And Not Do In The Dragon Army, pay attention. Number one, DO NOT STAB YOUR COMRADES YOU WILL GET ARRESTED remember however bad you think the barracks are PRISON WILL BE WORSE. Number two, I know you're going to think you're the business in your fancy arse uniform or whatever, but if you ever feel like strutting when you're home on leave and try to pull rank I will personally court marshall you down a well. Number three, IF YOU GET YOURSELF KILLED I WILL FUCKING MURDER YOU. Number four, I have heard it said that soldiers are notoriously charming and delightful, all the nice girls love one, etc. etc. You're not a nice girl so I don't think they'll like you, but that said please try not to get your heart broken, I will have to –_ hey,” Raphael wriggled the letter just out of reach as Ivory made a violent grab for it, his entire body going tense and furious. “There's still another page!”

“It's enough, it's fine,” Ivory snarled, “I don't want you to read anymore, give it back.”

“But -”

“No,” he snatched at the parchment, which wrinkled and complained under his fingers, and Raphael let go rather than tear it. “It's fine, it's not bad news so I don't need to, it's enough, it's fine."

Raphael felt the confusion wind up through his chest like yarn on a needle, looped up and knotting over on itself, and he swallowed down the urge to plead with Ivory about the rest of the letter. It wouldn't do any good, anyway, the moment was over; the tiny private part of Ivory which he'd just been allowed to meet was already folding itself back up behind the glassy, knife-wielding exterior the rest of the world got. Raphael felt bereft, as if something precious and expensive had just been torn from his grasp. He swallowed, about to apologise, and then the thunder opened fire again, directly overhead. Ivory yelped, and his fingers caught themselves involuntarily around Raphael's sleeve.

“Are you -” Raphael said, breathless at the brand new realisation that Ivory was camping out here, hidden away under stairs and blankets, clutching at his brother's letter like it was a lifeline and jumping every so often, _while there was a thunderstorm going on outside._

“Don't you fucking dare,” Ivory hissed, his fingers clamping down painfully hard on Raphael's sleeve. “If you so much as breathe a word of this, I swear I will not care about being arrested, no matter what my stupid brother says. We're done here.”

And with that, he abruptly stood up, ducked out from his alcove and stalked off, leaving the blankets behind like an empty snakeskin, and Raphael sighed deeply and wrapped them around his own shoulders.

They still smelled a bit like Ivory – like clean skin, lemon, gunpowder and, ironically enough, thunderstorms.


	5. Lesson Five: Lessons In The Art Of Faking It

Luvander was going to be among the first group to have flying lessons. This in itself was great, and Luvander even did a little dance of happiness at the news together with Ace when Adamo announced the teams on Friday night, only then it turned out that Niall had also been assigned to the first three, and that Jeannot would be their mentor alongside the Chief Sergeant, and that was just so unfair that Luvander nearly stopped being excited about getting to see his girl again.

Before all that, though, he had to get through another Saturday night at the brothel. Again, this in itself was not the problem, because he knew he could count on Holly to keep up the charade, but then their last training unit ran late, which meant that there was, once again, a frantic rush on the showers that left Luvander standing naked but for his towel in front of a row of already occupied stalls when he'd been planning to take his shower ahead of time to avoid the embarrassment of the last time.

Of course, now that his carefully laid plans had crumbled to ash, his treacherous body was visibly hoping for a repeat instead.

“Luvander! Over here!”

Well, fuck.

The trouble was that several of the guys shared the shower stalls when they ran late or had a quick turnaround between classes. They all shared rooms and soap and lives as it was, the training barracks was small and everyone lived on top of each other. Luvander had seen Niall share a stall with Amery, and Amery with Ace, Ace with Jeannot; he'd seen Ghislain and Magoughin slip behind the same curtain and nobody thought anything of it (though how those two actually fit into the cubicle together, he hadn't figured out). There were four showers between twelve men, of course they shared when they had to. Refusing was more likely to get you labelled a cindy than agreeing, under the circumstances.

The other trouble was that Niall was disastrously good-looking, monstrously over-confident, and for some reason now thought that he and Luvander were _friends_. And the other other trouble was that Luvander had absolutely no willpower at all, which was why he found himself ducking behind the curtain, shedding his towel at the very last minute, and sliding in sideways so that, perhaps, maybe, there was the slimmest of slim chances that Niall wouldn't notice he was already hard.

Niall hadn't been recruited for recon, after all.

“Been meaning to ask you,” he was saying as Luvander kept his eyes on the tiled wall, “about last Sunday, when your girl came up here. Long way for a lass to walk. What did she want?”

“Well,” Luvander hadn't come up with anything plausible at all to explain Holly's visit, and nobody except Merritt had asked him yet, though there had been plenty of whistles and eyebrows. “Um. She's...” he stopped, swallowed, and focused on the hot sighing of the water down the drain. He risked a glance over his shoulder. Niall had his head tipped back, throat exposed, his fingers raking shampoo through his hair. Drops of water drizzled down his throat, pooling momentarily between his collarbones and reminding Luvander immediately of the way it had pooled between his fingers last week. He snapped his gaze back to the wall; felt the hot shiver of water and desire running down his back.

“Is she after you to marry her and take her up in the world,” Niall was grinning, he could tell. “Cos, you know, they do that. Some of them. Get ideas.”

“She's not like that,” Luvander murmured.

He was spared a more convoluted explanation when there was a small commotion in the stall next door – apparently Merritt had managed to fidget all of Evariste's shampoo down the drain, and Amery was making jokes about _shampoo_ and other gooey white things that disappeared down drains sometimes, which only served to make Evariste even angrier. Luvander made a point of scrubbing himself down as quickly as he could, decidedly _not_ looking at Niall and pretending like he wasn't even aware of his stubbornly persistent erection.

“So, you going to see her again tonight? Or, if you're getting bored, I could recommend some of the other girls for you...”

“No, no, I'm good, thanks,” Luvander said hastily and noticed that he was trying to wash his hair with a bar of soap. So much for getting done before everyone else.

“Must be real special with her,” Niall muttered, sounding impressed. Luvander made the mistake of opening his eyes just as his head was turned to the side and angled downwards, and nearly dropped the shampoo when he saw that Niall had one hand curled loosely around his own prick, giving it a tug now and then as he washed himself that wasn't, perhaps, purely for the purpose of getting clean.

“It is,” he heard himself agreeing, his mouth dry despite the steam from the showers. He didn't say _but not in the way you think_ , because Niall was looking at him with eyes dark and heavy like velvet, his mouth slightly open, and his hand had stilled at the base of his cock.

Well, then.

If he was going to be fucked, he might as well do it properly, Luvander thought, pressed one finger to his lips to indicate for Niall to be quiet, and got down on his knees.

“Right,” Niall whispered, and slid his hand into Luvander's hair instead, fingertips behind his ear. “A practical demonstration, huh?”

“Mm,” Luvander vaguely agreed, and took him in his mouth. Niall tasted heady and sudsy and clean, and he was quite big, so Luvander wrapped his palm around his cock and sucked on the tip first while he worked his throat loose and clamped an iron fist around his pounding heart. There was no shout of outrage from the other shower stalls, just the usual banter and laughter and splashing about, and Niall wasn't making any sounds at all, which was good, but also slightly unnerving. Slowly, Luvander swallowed him down deeper, let his fingers curl into the wet mess of Niall's pubic hair and tried to remember all those handy little tricks Matthew the stable boy had taught him back home.

He was so focused on doing Holly proud – well, theoretically, anyway – that he quite forgot about his own erection and the cold hard floor digging into his knees, and he'd just about worked himself into a panicked frenzy of thinking that surely Niall was only humouring him and he wasn't actually any good at this when Niall bucked his hips once, twice, tightened his fingers in Luvander's hair and pulled him off just before he came on Luvander's shoulder.

“Fuck me,” he breathed, head dropping back against the tiles, just low enough for only Luvander to hear. Luvander clamped his lips shut on the _yes please_ that they automatically wanted to respond with, and let Niall pull him to his feet, his knees stiffening and protesting. He could still feel the weight of Niall's cock on his tongue.

Embarrassed now, Luvander didn't want to look at Niall, he wanted to get washed and get out, go somewhere – perhaps not even to see Holly, although that would look so horribly suspicious now he didn't think he had much choice – and curse himself for his own stupidity. Last week had been one thing, like Holly had said, soldiers helped each other out the same way they shared shower stalls sometimes. Also, Niall had been the one doing the helping, and nobody was likely to call _him_ cindy without getting laughed out of town at best, and their teeth knocked out at worse. This, however, was a whole different story: this was delicate-looking, swift-riding Luvander who liked sparkly things getting down on his knees voluntarily, right before a trip to a whorehouse; if Niall told anyone there wouldn't be any misreading the situation.

Niall, apparently, had other ideas. “Thanks,” he whispered, up close against the back of Luvander's ear again even as he was reaching for the soap. And then Niall's hand snaked round in front of him again and he was saying “here, can't leave you in that state, wouldn't be fair,” and Luvander started to wish he'd never even heard of the fucking royal dragon corps.

“Holly,” he muttered in the girl's ear after an awkwardly silent ride to the brothel, where Niall had gone in the second carriage and Luvander had fiddled with his gloves in a corner and ignored Merritt and Evariste's squabble over whether Merritt actually really did fuck women or if he just fidgeted himself around so much that everyone got off out of irritation. “Holly, I fucked up.”

“Hello, darling,” she murmured back, husky and rich, dark cherries and cream. “I hoped you'd come, there's a smelly gent been trying to get me on my own for hours, can we go straight up?”

“Yes, please,” Luvander sighed, even though he was feeling a little bad for leaving poor Ivory on his own, who hadn't managed to duck out from under Amery's and Niall's arms quickly enough to avoid being dragged into the carriages with them tonight and was glowering at everything in his line of sight, especially Raphael, for some reason, who, in turn, seemed rather subdued.

“Fuuuuuuuuck,” Luvander blurted as soon as he and Holly were behind closed doors once again. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.”

“Yes, well, that's what usually goes on in a place like this,” Holly teased as she busied herself with the chandelier beside the bed. “Now tell me what you did.”

She sounded almost gleeful and jumped on the bed like a little girl about to be told a bedtime story, and Luvander swallowed and sat down next to her, squeezing his hands between his knees and trying not to feel silly because all his life was good for, apparently, was providing entertainment for a whore.

“It happened again,” he murmured, mouth twisted miserably sideways, and dropped his head in his hands. “I made it happen again.”

~

Ivory was fucking furious.

He was furious with Amery and Niall, for dragging him here; he was furious with himself, for not getting the hell out of Amery's and Niall's way when they'd been clearly up to something; he was furious with Evariste, for slamming the carriage door after they'd jointly manhandled Ivory inside, he was furious with Compagnon and Magoughin, for making jokes about how Ivory clearly needed to _blow off s_ ome steam, he was furious with Ghislain for idly standing by, and he was furious with every single airman who had the gall to be genuinely excited about going back to the whorehouse; but most of all, he was furious with Raphael, for looking at him with that _wounded_ expression in his eyes every bastion damned time he caught sight of him and for following him around to try and fucking _apologise_ for what had happened the other day.

Maybe he did need to blow off some steam, but the way Ivory liked to do that was with sharp blades and quick targets. None of the women counted, and none of the airmen either, though that was only because there wasn't a man among them who'd be quick enough for a real fight, the dull-witted sons of Ke'Han bastards.

Inside, the men all flickered off to their various corners of favourites and favours, and Ivory caught sight of Raphael smiling at the blonde girl who apparently had _fingers_. His chest tightened up like he'd stabbed himself and forgotten how to breathe then, because there was Raphael, looking cheerful and relaxed and content and downright _pleased_ to be in a place like this with a girl with _fingers_ and all the annoying kicked puppy had disappeared now he wasn't looking at Ivory. Whether it was the letter or the thunderstorm or something else that had made Raphael decide he felt sorry for Ivory, or whatever the fuck that face meant anyway, Ivory hated the fact that it had happened and was furious with himself as well, for allowing it.

He spotted Luvander's rosebud-cheeked girl with the swinging hips and the pretty, pouting mouth leading him up one of the winding staircases already, and realised the girl they'd left behind them was Aria, red hair and green eyes just like last time. She appeared to be desperately trying not to engage a man in a worn-down coat with a shifty, brown-toothed smile.

“Excuse me,” Ivory interrupted whatever the man was leering, “We're busy.”

“Fuck off,” the man started, beer on his breath and too much of it evident in his sloppy gaze. “Who d'you think you are?”

“Dragon Corps,” Ivory snapped, taking Aria's arm and bringing her to her feet. “Goodnight.”

Aria didn't giggle, for which he was infinitely grateful. He earned himself an approving look from Compagnon and Magoughin on his way past, but ignored this as Aria led him up the stairs, not even checking whether Raphael had seen them. He was fuming all the way up to the room, and then suddenly cold and exhausted as soon as the door clicked shut behind them.

“So, Airman Ivory,” Aria smirked, leaning against a bedpost with her long legs crossed at the ankles. Her gaze flickered pointedly down to his crotch. “Are we going to stand around again like last time, or are you here for something else this time?”

Ivory didn't say anything, just sat down cross-legged in front of the fireplace, because he wasn't going anywhere near that bed, and stared into the tattered ribbons of flame and smoke, thinking of his dragon. Cassiopeia was all cold smooth steel and razor-sharp spikes that made the air sing when she moved, until she got riled up about something – one of the handlers touching her wrong, or a bumbling recruit getting too close – and was suddenly wreathed in beautiful, poisonous, tarnished silver fire, heat rippling off her in waves.

How he wished he could see her right now, and let her fire burn all those sputtering, flickering feelings out of his soul until he was calm and pristine again, unaffected, uninterested.

“You know, you're quite the handsome fella,” Aria broke into his reverie. She hitched up her skirts and folded her legs clumsily onto the floor beneath the windowsill she'd sat on last time, far away so as not to make Ivory feel itchy, but close enough to talk without raising her voice. “I bet there's girls who'd fall over themselves to show you a good time.”

“Maybe I don't want a good time,” Ivory said.

“Everyone wants a good time,” Aria replied with a half-smile, dry and sun-warmed like a handful of straw giving way under a cat's paw.

“Not the kind of good time you're implying,” Ivory muttered darkly and turned his head back to the fire. Somewhere next door, a bed started creaking ominously. “I've already got a girl,” he tacked on almost as an afterthought.

“Is that right?” Aria smirked, “what're you doing here, then? Suppose your friends insisted. Suppose your girl wouldn't like it much?”

“I don't know that she'd care,” Ivory shrugged, wondering why he'd started.

“Funny. Most girls do, if they find out.” Aria stretched her legs out in front of her, her legs bare again, and toed off the delicate, silvery beaded slippers she was wearing. Her toenails were polished a lick of patriotic scarlet. “What is it then, you want me to pretend to be her, give you a taste of what she's saving til you're wedded? Or you want me to be nothing like her at all, spice things up a bit, maybe? Whatever you want, Airman,” she told him, easy and slick like sweet oil, “'course, you'll be needing to tell me what it is she's like, first. But I can do it.”

“There's nothing like her,” Ivory said, quietly, thinking about sunlight on Cassiopeia's scales and the smoke and gears of her laughter; thinking about hard steel and leather between his legs and the electric shiver of excitement that was so entirely separate from arousal it was another country. “I'm not going to sleep with you,” he told Aria again.

“I had your friend, last time,” she told him, as if he cared.

“No, you didn't,” Ivory shook his head. “I don't have friends.”

“So, you've got yourself a fancy girl, you don't have any friends, and you pulled your airman card on that sleazy git to get me up here – thank you, by the way – but you don't want to sleep with me,” Aria recounted. “You're a funny one, no mistake.”

Ivory almost smiled at that, the words tugging at the side of his mouth and making him wistful. He'd been called worse for less. A twist of peppery black homesickness curdled deep in his gut again. He'd agreed to come here, to put on this uniform he hadn't even been measured for yet; agreed to all of this because of Cassiopeia. Because he'd dreamed of dragons years ago, because fire and metal and magic made him feel the same way that music did; because Cassiopeia had looked at him and seen someone who could burn shit up and see the beauty in the flames rather than the misery of the fallout. If it hadn't been for that, he'd never have left home and his brothers and the security of knowing that he might be awkward and silent and unusually fond of knives, but at least he had Maxwell and Sebastian.

“Aria,” he said, tapping his fingers against the mantelpiece and still not turning around. “Can you read?”

“Some,” she told him. “Nothing fancy. You got a yen for stories, Airman?”

“I've got a letter,” he said, feeling the crumpled parchment still in his pocket where it had stayed ever since he'd wrenched it away from Raphael. “I only know what's in the first half.”

“How about we make a deal,” Aria suggested, and her voice was the smoke and thunder of bad weather that had already passed over, an underlying calm that followed the nausea and palpitations of a storm. “I'll look at this letter, and you tell me some things about your not-friend Airman Luvander.”

Ivory frowned. Now there was a curveball. “Why do you want to know things about Airman Luvander? He sees Holly, not you.”

“Yes,” Aria said, pointedly. “That is exactly why.”

~

Raphael was lost.

He'd just nipped out very shortly to use the bathroom, because he'd been meaning to go back at the barracks, but then he'd been distracted by the fact that Amery and Niall were half carrying a hissing and spitting Ivory to the carriages and told him to come along quick, and it was just no use getting sweet with a girl when you had to pee so badly it made your stomach hurt. Thankfully, Maisie was always very understanding of things that the other boys considered to be cardinal sins in a whorehouse, like not going to the loo beforehand, or having put your pants on backward, or comparing your girl's hair to moonlight while she was sucking you off.

Now Raphael was standing in the corridor outside the bathrooms, physically relieved but otherwise on the verge of a panic attack, because all the doors looked exactly the same, and while the ladies of the house seemed to be able to tell which room was occupied and which wasn't, Raphael certainly couldn't. He'd left Maisie with some poetry to entertain herself with while he was gone, but he still needed to get back soon, so he turned a corner that looked vaguely familiar, and was almost sure he'd seen the pot plant before that stood next to a closed door.

Turned out there was more than one such pot plant in this house.

Apologising profusely and holding his hand over his eyes, Raphael shut the door on a scene that seemed to involve Evariste, Merritt, and one of the whores they'd both set their eyes on that night, and stumbled blindly down the corridor until he was back at the bathrooms.

Okay. He could do this.

He'd definitely done a right turn not long before the bathrooms, so he went left this time, wisely counting pot plants, and was relieved when he found a painting he recognised as having passed just after exiting Maisie's room. This time, he knocked before entering, but made the mistake of not waiting for a reply, and was about to leave again upon seeing the empty bed when he spotted the other two inhabitants of the room, both coiled separately on the floor by the fireplace and fully clothed.

“Shit,” he muttered, “shit, wrong room, I'm – sorry, I – are you ok?”

He directed the last to Ivory, who looked pale and livid and like he could kill something without even bothering to fetch his knives, except he'd never get his hands dirty like that.

“Maisie's next door on the left, sweetheart,” the girl with the red hair and bare feet told him. “The room's left, not your's as your standing right now. Alright?”

“Yes, yes, right, yes, fine,” Raphael stumbled backwards and almost fell over his own feet. “Sorry. Bye. Goodnight. Bye.”

This time, when he knocked on what he really hoped actually was Maisie's door, he waited for her not just to call out, but to come and let him in herself.

“I just interrupted... I got lost...” he whimpered, letting her fold him up against her tiny frame, bird-slender arms cosying around his head and burying her hands in his hair. “Your friend next door, with the red hair, and my... friend... or, well. Um. Fuck.”

“Oh, don't you worry about that,” Maisie soothed, her voice like a quiet melody on a well-stringed guitar. “Happens all the time. Here, I'll help you forget.”

“They weren't doing, they weren't, they were,” Raphael stammered as she steered him over to the bed and sat him down, working his shirt buttons open with her mouth on his neck, humming agreement. “They were just sitting there? Why would they? Why?” he steadied his hands on Maisie's slender hips and she ran her tongue up to his ear.

“Aria gets that a lot, my love,” she whispered, sweet as honey. One of her hands trickled like mercury inside his shirt. “People not in the mood. Don't think about it.”

“Is that, is that, I didn't know that was, but,” Raphael caught her wrist in his hand, stalling her exploration. Her tiny bones felt fragile under his broad, warm palm. “I mean, if I wasn't in the mood, would you sit and talk to me like that?”

Maisie shrugged. “If you wanted me to.” She shifted in his lap. “Doesn't feel like that's what you want right now, though, love.”

“No,” Raphael agreed, sadly. He felt disoriented, wondered if this is how it would be to go out on a raid and not be able to find the stars. “No, it's not.”

~

Luvander woke up in Niall's bunk.

He knew it was Niall's bunk for three reasons: firstly, the bunks opposite contained Ivory, pressed up pristine in a fold of white bed linen, an electric shock of hair around his face but no other indication that he'd moved a muscle since getting into bed, and – down below – Raphael, disastering across his pillow with hair that looked like it had been directly through a war and a hickey crawling down his neck. Secondly, the pillows smelled like Niall, and Luvander knew what Niall smelt like because his senses were finely tuned to that after a month of living under the same roof and sharing two showers. Thirdly, he wasn't alone and if Luvander was going to recognise anybody else's penis by the feeling of it against the back of his thigh, it wasn't unreasonable to assume it would be the one he'd had in his mouth the night before.

This was bad.

Very carefully, he tried to drill his mind into going through the motions of last night instead of doing what it really wanted to do, which was panic and run screaming for the hills before he could get lynched by his big, manly, hetero-shower-sharing comrades. He remembered showering with Niall and everything that had gone down – forgiving himself the pun – in there. Not helpful. He remembered going to the brothel, whisking Holly away and telling her that Niall had got him off again right before they'd left, and he remembered her asking him how it had been his fault, and Luvander hadn't wanted to tell her, exactly, especially not the part that sort of, a little bit, kind of involved her... and Holly had slipped out and fetched a bottle of rum and that was about where Luvander's memory guttered like a tall, angry candle flame, and went out.

It wasn't exactly helping that Niall was slowly and methodically working his hand down the front of Luvander's pants... _Wait._

“Niall,” Luvander hissed, barely any louder than a sleepy huff of breath. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Helping,” Niall breathed back, lips like warm raindrops on the back of Luvander's neck. He'd managed to roll his palm easily around Luvander's morning erection by now, and Luvander found he couldn't actually make words anymore and pressed his face so hard into Niall's pillow it hurt, to stop himself from making any sounds, either.

If someone had asked him, in a lucid moment, whether Luvander thought he'd be able to get off in a room full of sleeping, hungover, aggressive, and quite possibly homophobic airmen when he himself was spectacularly hungover and spectacularly terrified, Luvander would have laughed in their face. Luvander would also have been wrong.

He came embarrassingly fast _yet again_ , unable to stop his hips from arching into Niall's warm grip, but infinitely glad that he managed to stifle his gasp in the pillow at the last moment. Niall made a sleepy, snuffly noise of approval, simply wiped his hand on the sheets, and spooned up even closer to Luvander, promptly falling back asleep with his nose buried in Luvander's neck and his arm tight around his waist.

Heart pounding, Luvander listened for signs of anyone else being awake, but there was only Amery's gentle snoring, Ivory's eerie silence, and Raphael's occasional shuffling and baby bird noises that Luvander and the others had snickered over in the common room on more than one occasion before.

When Luvander finally managed to disentangle himself from the sprawling warmth of Niall's body, had taken a good long, cold shower and had a couple of cups of coffee in the deserted mess hall, he'd almost lulled himself into a false sense of security again, thinking he might've just got away with it. That was until Ivory loped into the mess hall, a look on his face like frost bite and smouldering ash, grabbed him by the lapels, and shook him.

“What the fuck. Do you think. You're doing,” Ivory snarled, finally slamming Luvander against the backrest of his chair and letting go of him as if burned. “Don't think I wasn't awake for that little display earlier, Luvander. Are you out of your fucking mind? With Amery and Raphael _right there_?”

“I didn't exactly have a _choice_ ,” Luvander hissed back, “you think they'd have stayed asleep if I'd leapt out of bed screaming and dancing around your dorm with a raging hard-on? What would that have helped?”

“Pretty sure you could've just _said no_ ,” Ivory spat, still in Luvander's face although pointedly not touching him.

“You could've just _not watched_ ,” Luvander shot back.

“I was _not_. Watching.”

“Right, yeah, why didn't you say anything then, if you're that bothered, and you were awake?”

Ivory scanned his face for a moment, his eyes thin and furious, like he didn't recognise Luvander at all. It made Luvander want to lash out and it also terrified him, because Ivory had been safe up until now, he'd been trustworthy in his stoic refusal to befriend anyone and his inhuman ability to remain silent and deadly in the face of airman banter and teasing. Luvander had assumed – wrongly, it now seemed – that Ivory either shared a degree of his own predilections, or at any rate wasn't upset by them. He was the last man among them from whom Luvander would have expected this sort of vitriol and disgust. “I don't know what you think you're doing,” he said, finally, the words cut from ice and carved with a complete lack of sympathy. Something snapped deep in Luvander's gut, something cold and miserable and confused. “But you need to stop.”

“Fuck you,” he tried to make it aggressive, but it came out pathetic, and Ivory turned away with a sneer Luvander had only seen him throw in Amery’s or Evariste's direction before now. “Just, whatever. Fuck off.”

Ivory strode out of the mess hall without bothering himself with breakfast, and Luvander sank into a chair, propped his head in one hand and stared at the dregs of his now cold coffee, and felt sick. He wondered, if he resigned his commission, whether they'd let him say goodbye to Yesfir.

~

Ivory was having a Very Bad, No Good Sunday. Everything from being dragged to the brothel the night before, to Raphael walking in on him and Aria, to waking up that morning with Niall and Luvander doing... _that_ in the other bed, to the hideous argument they'd just had and the persistent lack of breakfast _and_ tea, was coiling miserably in his guts around the empty spaces of hunger and the roiling swell of nausea as he sat cowering over his piano and holding his stomach instead of playing. He hadn't meant to snap at Luvander like that – or he had, but he hadn't meant for it to feel so bad after, because Luvander was only setting himself up for heartbreak, the kind that Maxwell had so jokingly warned him of in his letter, and it didn't seem like he was going to come to his senses on his own.

Not that Ivory had cared about any of that. He just wanted to spare himself the bother of all hell breaking loose if Amery or any of the others got wind of what Luvander and Niall had been doing _in Niall's bed._

And yet, Luvander's “fuck off” had hurt, hot and bright and sudden like a blade slicing through your fingertip when you weren't expecting it.

Ivory tightened his arms around his stomach and pressed his forehead to the cool surface of the piano. The only good thing about this Sunday was that not many people were up yet, or if they were, they'd just stumbled into the mess hall to stare listlessly at the food for half an hour, wondering if they could risk eating some toast without throwing up. He'd have the common room to himself for a while yet.

Except then the door swung open, and Ivory didn't quite have the energy to peel his forehead off the piano or sit up, so he just groaned a little and hoped that whoever it was would assume he was hungover and leave him alone again.

“So this is what a freshly baked airman of the dragon corps looks like,” said a horribly familiar voice into the dust-flecked silence. “Freshly baked in more ways than one, apparently. Have you been _drinking_ , little brother?”

“Who let you in here,” Ivory groaned, torn between the desire to throw himself out the window (conveniently situated right next to the piano), or throwing himself at Maxwell and hiding in all the comfortable parts, from the span of his chest to the width of his hands, to his ridiculously over-cultivated beard. “Private quarters, you aren't allowed.”

“Apparently you're allowed visitors on Sundays,” Sebastian said casually, as if just one of them wasn't bad enough.

Ivory kept his eyes closed and put his hands over his ears. “If I hit myself over the head I'll wake up, right,” he checked, “and this horrible audio hallucination will go away?”

“I am wounded,” Maxwell said, dramatically, and Ivory heard him throw himself woefully into what sounded like Ace's favourite armchair, the pink one that creaked. It had been red once, apparently. “He's disowned us, Seb, our baby brother is _embarrassed_ by us. All because he's a big damn airman now with a fancy uniform, he thinks he can just throw us away like litter. I'm going to cry.”

“There, there,” Sebastian said, and Ivory could see him perching on the arm of the chair that Maxwell would be sprawled in with one arm thrown over his eyes in melodramatic disaster, without having to look. “I know, it's a sin and a shame and he's an ungrateful little sod, but we'll forgive him, one day. You'll look back on this and laugh, Max.”

“Not if they send his body home in a thousand fire-blasted pieces in a box,” Maxwell feigned sobbing. Ivory considered whether he had the strength to pick up the piano and throw it at them both. “Just think how awful it will be, when he gets himself slaughtered and the last time he saw us he refused to acknowledge his own kin. Think how guilty he'll feel.”

“I won't feel guilty,” Ivory pointed out listlessly, “because I'll be dead.”

“Yes, well, it's all very well to sit there with your dragon-grade hangover and talk like you'd rather be incinerated, I'm sure you would if you've been getting yourself sloshed on military booze, but it's no excuse,” Maxwell continued, and Ivory summoned a sigh from the depths of his chest and let it loose into the room, because this had to be real, there was no way he could summon a psychosomatic Maxwell that would talk _this much_. If Ivory was going to hallucinate his brothers, he'd have hallucinated a version of them which was _helpful_.

“I'm not hungover,” he finally cracked an eye open to tell them.

“Then why on earth aren't you pleased to see us? Didn't you get my letter?”

“Ivory,” they were both looking at him with matching faces of carefully constructed worry, and Sebastian's filtered down to his tone now, too. Ivory's head hurt. “What's been going on?”

He was about to suggest they go somewhere less public: a walk, despite the rain, or even one of the empty rooms where they had classes; anywhere that would mean none of the other airmen could stroll in with their actual hangovers. Ivory still felt the umbilical pull that wanted to hug both of his brothers, to let himself be folded away for a moment in all their stupid, anxious, over-protective jokes and teasing and annoyances. His mother had died when Ivory was less than ten; he barely remembered her. Max and Seb had brought him up themselves, and while Ivory had regularly hated how often they seemed to forget that he wasn't ten years old anymore, there were occasions where that sort of fraternal coddling was exactly what he wanted. What he did not want, however, was for any of his fellow airmen to ever meet his brothers. It was bad enough that bastion-damned Luvander and _fucking_ Raphael knew he even had them. Ivory could not imagine anything worse than any of the boys marching in on a family reunion cuddle, which was why he wanted to kill something three times over when there was a clatter at the half-open door and it swung wider to spill Amery, Niall and Raphael into the room.

Worse, Niall was already asking “hey, Ivory, last night, eh,” and Amery was chiming in with “is she really patriotic, Ive, red collars and cuffs, know what I mean,” and Raphael was looking miserable and awkward again.

“You,” Ivory said, carefully balancing letters against each other on his tongue, “are all officially dead.”

“Here we go again,” Maxwell stage-whispered at Sebastian, still sprawled on Ace's armchair. “Where did we go wrong, Seb, that our brother resorts to death threats every time someone talks to him?”

“Shh,” Sebastian whispered back, “I want to hear about _last night_."

Amery and Niall had matching expressions of pure glee on their faces as they looked back and forth between Ivory and his brothers, and Ivory couldn't even bring himself to glance in Raphael's direction. Instead he stood up, made sure to meticulously brush any non-existent dust off his clothes, and casually plucked one of the knives from the wall that Ace and Jeannot had been using for darts the other night. Amery and Niall were wise enough to hold their tongues – not so Raphael, who clearly had a death wish to match Ivory's death threats.

“You're, oh, you must be, I mean, are these your brothers, Ivory? I mean, you look kind of, that is, you look alike, a bit, with the hair and the... scariness... hello...”

“Raphael,” Amery muttered, poking him between the shoulderblades. “Raphael, I think we should leave.”

Niall was already half out the door, laughing hysterically, and Amery was tugging at Raphael's arm while Raphael made one of his saddest baby bird noises and murbled something incoherent about “leaving, yes, Amery don't, I'm, bye, yes, leaving.”

The door slammed shut behind them, and Ivory threw the knife at it for good measure, something prickling coldly at the back of his neck as the tip of the blade rammed into the wood right where Raphael's head had been moments before. There was a slow clap from the depths of Maxwell's armchair, and suddenly he was being pulled backwards into Sebastian's arms.

“We're going to talk about _all_ of this,” Sebastian murmured into Ivory's hair while Ivory simultaneously leaned into the embrace and fought against it. “But first, I think we should go somewhere that has tea.”

~

“No.”

Chief Sergeant Adamo was leaning back in his office chair, his feet crossed on the desk in front of him and his hands behind his head, the very picture of Sunday afternoon casual and relaxed, but his dark eyes were fixed intently on Luvander, who was feeling smaller and smaller by the second.

“I just,” Luvander whimpered, his hands in fists on his knees.

“No,” Adamo said again, then swung his legs off the table and sat forward with his elbows digging into Luvander's pitiful attempt at a letter of resignation and his fingers clasped impatiently tight. “You cannot resign from this corps, whatever those personal reasons of yours. I think I made that quite clear, Airman Luvander.”

“But I just,” Luvander whispered, air catching in his chest and hurting. He couldn't meet Adamo's gaze.

“You just nothing,” Adamo told him, gruff but not impatient. “Even if you could resign, you think that girl of yours'll take another rider, excepting if you somehow got killed and she didn't? And even that we don't know, it's a maybe which is so statistically unlikely to happen that no one's bothered much to think on it. This isn't how it works, Luvander. It's not like the regular army.”

“She's only seen me once,” Luvander tried, his heart so clearly not in it that it was barely worth the breath.

“Once is all it takes,” Adamo said, and leant forwards with this elbows still braced against parchment and woodwork, his hands clasped. “You want to know what'll happen to her if you fuck off? You want me to tell you about how she'll pine, and attack people, and end up being dismantled, her parts recycled into some other beast who'll choose some other rider but never be quite what we needed? 'cos I can tell you. If it'll help.”

Luvander swallowed, his mouth dry and a pounding behind his eyes that reminded him, once again, just how much he'd had to drink last night. It felt like fire and metalwork, reminding him that dragons were cruel and capricious when they wanted to be; that being chosen by one was a privilege and a nightmare. “No,” he said, thickly.

“We've only got three swifts as it is,” Adamo reminded him. “You're important. She's more important, I'll grant you, but we can't fly her without you. If we tried to put someone else on her back now she's decided your hers, she'd buck him off and set him on fire before he hit the ground. Then she'd snack on his toasty remains, I don't doubt. Look,” he frowned, glanced down at his hands and then back up at Luvander with his face schooled into something that was less superior officer and more mentor. “You want to tell me what the problem is?”

“No,” Luvander said again, sharp and immediate and meaning _hell fucking no way on earth._ “No, I – I'm sorry – sir, no. You can't help.”

“Alright,” Adamo didn't push it, to Luvander's relief. Instead, he swept the resignation letter up with the palm of one hand and pointed it first at Luvander, and then at the fireplace. “Then I'll dispose of this piece of nonsense, and we'll both forget this conversation ever happened. I'll see you for flight training, sharp tomorrow morning. Agreed?”

Luvander left the office feeling worse than he had done when he entered it. Thinking about Yesfir being taken to pieces and auctioned off into some other patchwork dragon made his fists clench up again; he wanted to hurt whoever had come up with that idea, press his fingertips up against their windpipe and let them know what it would feel like to be broken. Adamo knew that, of course, knew exactly what it was like to have been chosen by one of the girls, and therefore exactly what to say to change his mind about leaving, even if the rest of it hadn't been true.

It was true, though. Luvander had read the contract he'd signed – after signing it, like a fool, but he wasn't alone in that. It wasn't even small print. Bold, inked letters by order of the Esar, commissioning his service _until such time as it is no longer required or the soldier is rendered incapable of serving his country_. In other words, until the war's over or you're dead. Given that the war was older than living memory already, Luvander knew _dead_ was the more likely outcome. It hadn't seemed so bad when he'd been holding the gold-nibbed royal pen to make his signature, splotchy and scratching on the smooth, expensive parchment next to the royal seal. Then, he'd had Yesfir’s smoky laughter still ringing in his ears, his knees had still been trembling from gripping her steel shoulders not half an hour before, and he'd never heard of Niall with his perfect lips and helping hands.

He trailed out of Adamo's office and dejectedly down the corridor, thinking that perhaps a walk in the rain was the best answer. The land behind the barracks was wooded and dense, and might even be dry enough underfoot that Luvander wouldn't come back looking as externally, physically drowned as he was emotionally. He was just heading for the cloak rooms to change his boots when he ran into Raphael, who he'd last seen sleeping within arm's distance of Niall's bed.

Raphael looked as unhappy as Luvander felt.

“Oh,” Raphael said, “hey, Luvander. You alright? You look... um, never mind.”

“Yeah,” Luvander sighed, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “You too, by the way.”

Raphael echoed his sigh and let his light gaze tumble over the floor like dust bunnies in a gust of wind. “Long night,” he murmured, hitching up his shoulders, and it was so clearly a lie that Luvander almost felt sorry for him.

“How about a walk? I was just going to change my boots.”

~

Ivory took Maxwell and Sebastian into town, walking briskly so as to get as far away from the barracks and the other airmen as possible. His brothers were silent on the way there, except for the occasional comment about how hideous some building or other was or which flowers were growing along the path, since Sebastian had taken up a renewed interest in botany over the summer, and Ivory was glad for the patches of quiet and the soothing, inane chatter. The sky was bunched up in dark, angry folds, but was withholding any further rain for the moment, and Ivory found them a café that wasn't as crowded as the others, but still filled with enough background noise that no one would much care to listen in on their conversation. Maxwell took it upon himself to order for them, a large pot of buttery mint tea and some scones, and, when Ivory's stomach made an audible growl, some soup and crusty bread for him as well.

“You haven't been eating well, have you,” Max said disapprovingly, and Ivory rolled his eyes.

“Of course I've been eating well, they've even assigned us special diets and stuff, depending on what dragon we ride and what type of metabolism we have and... what?”

“So, those dragons,” Sebastian said, squinting at his tea. “Tell us about them.”

So Ivory told them. It was suddenly so much easier to talk, away from the barracks, and he told them about Cassiopeia, about what it had felt like to fly for the first time, how far he'd been able to see from up there. He wasn't supposed to talk about the training in public, so he told them instead about how annoying his other room mates were, and some of the shenanigans Ace had got up to, and about the piano in the common room, until his soup bowl was empty and the tea down to the last dregs.

“Well,” Maxwell finally said, leaning back in his chair and smoothing his palm down over his beard in contemplation. “It seems you've been quite busy...”

“...getting all polished up for that dragon lady of yours...” Sebastian continued.

“...learning some social skills...”

“...making sweet, sweet love to your new piano...”

“...getting naked with patriotic redheads...”

They trailed off, both leaning forward with their hands on the table at the same time like a pair of predators closing in on their prey. There was a steely glint in their eyes that Ivory recognised all too well, and he slid down in his chair with a sad, resigned little “ohh”.

“So,” said Sebastian.

“About that,” said Maxwell.

“No,” said Ivory.

“Yes,” his brothers said in unison. “Last time we checked,” Maxwell continued, “you weren't interested in ladies, patriotic or otherwise. What's changed?”

“Nothing's changed,” Ivory scowled at the dregs of his soup bowl, the swirled scrape of liquid still clinging stubbornly around the sides, and the tiny flakes of bread crust lurking in the bottom. He thought about Aria and her bare feet, and her questions about Luvander which had all boiled down to whether he was really _just talking_ to Holly. She'd asked him that outright, after a series of pointed inquiries about vaguely related things, and Ivory had met her eyes across the bedroom. Aria had cocked her head to the side and raised an eyebrow, her lips pressed up tight into a disbelieving pout, and Ivory had said _ah_ with one of his rare but dazzling moments of realisation: the kind that usually left him with a headache.

“Things I'm not interested in,” he told his brothers very carefully, “aren't things I care for the other airmen to know about.”

Maxwell glanced at Sebastian, who pulled a face, and Max nodded, turned back to Ivory and said “like that, is it?”

Ivory nodded.

“In which case, little brother,” Maxwell's grin was back, stretching across his face like a snake. “You need a few lessons in the art of faking it. Because making sexy groaning noises into your piano the morning after and not having breakfast is not going to convince anybody at all that you've been having filthy expensive red-headed sex all night. Savvy?”

“I do not need _lessons_ on _anything_ ,” Ivory bit out, “ _especially_ not from you.”

“Have it your way,” Maxwell smirked, “then we're going to talk about your curly-haired room mate instead. You know, the one who makes baby bird noises when he sees you.”

“He makes those all the time,” Ivory muttered sullenly, hunching his shoulders and feeling a renewed slip-slide of panic in his stomach when he thought about Raphael telling Amery and Niall, maybe even right now, that Ivory wouldn't know how patriotic Aria was, because they'd never got into bed together.

“Funny,” Sebastian said, and gestured for the waiter to bring them another pot of tea. “I could've sworn you don't usually notice these kinds of things about people you find annoying.”

“Hard to not notice it when that's one of the things that's so annoying about them,” Ivory shot back on a snarl.

“Tell us about those other things, then,” Maxwell said casually, “all the things that make this one, in particular, so annoying?”

Ivory had a bad feeling about this, but he couldn't figure out what, precisely, Maxwell was hoping to achieve, and he just _really needed_ to rant to someone about Raphael.

“Ugh, he's just, so annoying,” Ivory whined, pawing at the table. He accepted a fresh cup of tea from Sebastian, drained half in one go even though it was scalding hot, and pressed the warm china to his forehead, closing his eyes. “His name's Raphael and he's been teaching me to read but he's just so, he makes all these _noises_ and he has all this _hair_ and he talks in his sleep and he's friends with the worst people and they always make fun of him but he _still likes them_ even though they're horrible and disgusting and he's actually really nice when he's on his own, except for when he does that poetry thing, or the thing with his hands, or when he has _shoulders_ , and I just can't deal with his _voice_ and his – you're laughing at me. Of course you're laughing at me, what was I expecting, sympathy? Fucking hell.”

“Oh, we're not laughing at you,” Sebastian wheezed, his chin propped up in his palm.

“Except we totally are,” Maxwell added merrily. “You know, when we saw you slumped over the piano this morning, I thought, oh dear, we're going to have to have that conversation about alcohol again, and how you really shouldn't have any, because the last time you did, you threw up on your cat. But it's even worse than that.”

“You're in feelings,” Sebastian snickered, tears in the corners of his eyes, “you're in feelings with that pretty, curly-haired boy who makes baby bird noises at you and is teaching you to... _read_.”

He did a horrible suggestive eyebrow waggle at the last word that nearly rivalled Niall's equally horrible suggestive eyebrow waggle every time he was about to make a dirty pun, and Ivory stared blankly at him, not quite processing the meaning of what he'd said, as if some small gear had jammed in his head.

“What,” he said, just a misfit puzzle piece of a word, and Maxwell and Sebastian howled with laughter in their chairs.

“You want to get naked with him,” Maxwell explained. “You want to _make_ him make those noises, and you want to find out if he's got curls _everywhere_ , and you want those shoulders between your legs and...

Ivory stared at him in horror.

It wasn't the fact that Maxwell was being unnecessarily crude, or that they were teasing Ivory, because Ivory was quite used to that; what really made his mouth drop open in shock was the fact that they were _right_.

Oh, fucking _fuck_. This Sunday was the actual, literal _worst_.


	6. Lesson Six: The Difference Between Setting Something On Fire And Setting It Aflame

Monday was cold and crisp, frost on the lawns and air that shuddered down your spine like you'd turned the shower too cold too fast. The sky was a bright, iced blue, the colour of forget-me-nots; completely unmarred with cloud. A perfect day for flying.

Niall talked all the way to the Airman building and the dragon pens, his hands punctuating every other word with flickers and waves and wriggling fingers that made Luvander's stomach ache. He tried to stay quiet, focusing on the whirling anxieties in his chest that were a semi-lethal combination of Niall's presence, the thrilling excitement about seeing Yesfir again, Niall's voice, the memory of yesterday's awkward conversation with the Chief Sergeant and the worry that Yesfir somehow would know about it and be offended, Niall's face, Jeannot's eyebrow and the filthy thoughts that skittered through the back of his mind when Niall moved his fingers _like that_.

He forgot about all of this when he was shown into Yesfir's pen and she snaked her head around to greet him. Luvander would swear she was smiling as she swung her snout into his chest with a playful nudge, breathed in deep like she was remembering the way he smelled, and half closed her silver-black eyes with a charcoal hum. “Hello, darling,” he whispered, cradling her jaw in hands that were suddenly nowhere near big enough, and pressing his forehead up against the cold blue steel of her nose.

“I missed you,” she told him, and Luvander smoothed his thumbs back and forth along her cheeks. Nobody had ever missed him before.

“We're going flying today,” he said. “Did they tell you?”

Yesfir blinked and nudged him again. Luvander almost stumbled, and then nudged her back with his own face, laughing under his breath. “Good,” she purred, “we've all been getting itchy with rust. Don't know why they kept you away so long. Let's get some exercise and then you can tell me all those things I can feel you thinking about.”

“You can,” Luvander's heart skipped a beat, “you can feel me thinking?”

“Can feel you fretting about something like fuel's boiling in your gears, my precious.” Yesfir's voice was a music made of silver and secrets, and it made Luvander feel safe and reckless, all at once. He wondered if that was how Ace felt all the time.

“They might not let us stay, after the training,” he remembered, tightening his fingers on the sides of her face and feeling his stomach lurch sideways at the thought of going back to the barracks.

“Bollocks,” Yesfir snorted, “we'll set them on fire if they don't.”

Luvander laughed, then, loud and clear, and it was as if a rock that had been lodged somewhere in his solar plexus was suddenly kicked loose and let him breathe again. Adamo marched in soon after, told them to saddle up in no uncertain terms, and before Luvander knew it, they were watching the hatches lift, glinting in the sunlight, and all of Thremedon rolled itself out underneath them like a red carpet.

“Ready?” Yesfir growled, flicking her wings.

“More than,” Luvander replied, feeling giddy and carefree for the first time in months.

When they shot out into the light together with a whoop and a roar, Luvander left everything behind him that had been weighing him down. Flying was exhilarating, liberating, better than the rush of orgasm; more like the slow build-up of skilful foreplay, but without the needy nag of wanting to get off. Adamo and Jeannot took them through a series of manoeuvres, had them fly in formation and try out the fire-breathing mechanisms by tossing targets up in the air for them to hit, and Luvander could feel that Yesfir's fierce joy matched his own, knowing that he was finally good at something that wasn't matching the right colours or sweet-talking a shop girl into giving him a discount on a pair of silk gloves.

He was reluctant to return back to the pens at the end of the day, no matter how stiff and sore his whole body felt by the time Adamo signalled for them to come down. He was trembling from head to foot when he finally slid out of the saddle, and covered in soot, too, and he took a moment to lean heavily against Yesfir's flank and catch his breath before joining the others where Adamo was debriefing them.

“Next week, you'll be training in groups according to the type of dragon you ride, meaning swifts, fire-breathers, crushers and jaquelines together,” Adamo informed them after berating Ace for the many reckless stunts he'd pulled in mid-air, Niall for chasing after a flock of birds, and Luvander for getting distracted halfway through manoeuvres because he'd been so fascinated by the way the sun reflected off the rooftops like a jumble of diamonds and pearls. Luvander breathed a sigh of relief, since that meant he wouldn't be training with Niall anymore, then remembered he'd be with Amery instead and sighed again in resignation.

“Showers are up the stairs, left turn, right turn, third door on the left. I want you all sparkling and ready to leave in an hour, if you want to see your girl, you might as well do something useful and help polish her up. Ace, another word.”

Adamo snapped his fingers at Ace, who looked far too cheerful for someone who was about to be chewed out by his commanding officer, and Luvander waited until Niall and Jeannot had disappeared up the stairs to find the showers before turning around and sneaking back into Yesfir's bay. Adamo'd said it was allowed, so he was going to spend some more time with his girl and clean her up, and if that came with the additional benefit of not having to share a shower with Jeannot and Niall, well. Luvander wasn't going to complain.

~

Ivory was in the third group for flight training, meaning he wasn't going up until Wednesday. He set himself up to spend Monday and Tuesday engaged in a serious game of Avoiding Everybody, which was more strictly speaking a game of Avoiding Raphael and Avoiding Apologising To Luvander, but Ivory wasn't too fussed about the intricate details just yet. He'd said goodbye to his brothers at the gates to the barracks late on Sunday afternoon, and Maxwell had hugged him for an embarrassingly long time whilst repeating all the rules and admonishments that had been in his letter. Ivory didn't think anybody had seen, but he wasn't going to run the risk of finding out by making conversation. Fortunately, come Monday evening all any of the boys wanted to hear about was the first group of fliers recounting their day anyway. Ivory did want to listen, but the desire to avoid human interaction at all costs was stronger, and he slipped out of the common room as Niall and Ace held court, soot still under their fingernails and their hair smelling faintly like ash in spite of the showers.

Ivory wished the piano was in a different room.

He paced outside the mess hall for a bit, and then wandered the corridors slowly and deliberately. He'd already planned to go to bed early to avoid Raphael's mournful gaze, which was even worse after Sunday because if he looked down from his bunk and caught Raphael looking up from his, well. Maxwell was a demon, with the ideas he liked to plant in Ivory's head. There were angles he wasn't sure he could handle looking at Raphael from any longer, and Ivory half wished they could swap bunks, except for the part where that would mean he'd be _sleeping in Raphael's bed_.

He ran into Luvander on the stairs, Ivory going up and Luvander coming down, neither of them in much of a hurry. They both stopped, eyeing each other warily. Ivory felt like a cornered cat, bristling along the back of his neck, but Luvander didn't look predatory. He looked exhausted, all dark eyes and drawn around the edges of his face, like pages of a book which had been turned too often. Ivory frowned, wondering if something had gone wrong which Niall and Ace had not seen fit to boast about. Luvander had been flying all day, too, shouldn't he be as cheerful as they were down in the common room? Could dragons change their mind about riders? A splinter of horror drizzled all the way down his spine.

“Hey,” he said, slowly, and Luvander watched him with a tired, cautious expression. “Um,” Ivory swallowed, feeling in his throat for _I'm sorry_ and trying not to gag on the words. “How was – how was flying?”

“Good,” Luvander said, quiet and careful. “Great. Brilliant.”

“Good,” Ivory echoed. “So, um. You. Er.”

Luvander's shoulders were tense and unhappy and his fingers were cramped around the banister rail. “Did you need something?” he asked.

Ivory felt all the fight go out of him like dust from a beaten carpet. “You, actually,” he realised out loud. “Can I talk to you?”

“Not if it's anything like you talked to me yesterday morning, no.”

“It's not,” Ivory promised, grimacing at both the memory and the words that he had to spread out flat on his tongue before handing over. “I'm...” he swallowed, “look, I'm... I'm sorry about that, okay?”

Maxwell and Sebastian would be so proud, he thought bitterly, the words still jostling in his throat with jagged edges and sharp corners. Luvander stared at him for a long moment, as if he were working his tongue around a tangled knot of his own words, and then glanced back up the stairs.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “Tea first, though?”

There was freshly brewed tea in the mess hall when they slipped inside, and some of the staff were setting the tables for dinner against a backdrop of shimmering candlelight and the sputter of raindrops on the windows. Luvander and the others had been lucky with regards to the weather today, but now it was back to the miserable drizzle of autumn, and Ivory already dreaded the cold hallways that winter would bring to the stone floors and walls of the building. They poured themselves two large mugs of tea with milk, and Luvander led them down a few flights of steps and through an innocent looking door, behind which lurked the dark, deserted equipment room of their training gym.

“Here,” Luvander said, sitting down on a stack of mats shoved up against one wall and patting the space beside him. He lit one of the oil lanterns and put it on the floor between them, and they watched it casting hungry shadows along the training equipment for a while, sipping their tea.

“You were right, you know,” Luvander finally said, voice curved around a sigh. “I was stupid to let that happen.”

Ivory made an unhappy sound and drew his knees up to coil his arms around them.

“Just... I don't care what you, uh, let happen with Niall, but don't... don't go courting disaster, Luvander,” Ivory muttered desperately.

Luvander was silent for a long moment.

“So you weren't angry because...”

“No,” Ivory agreed, “I really wasn't.”

“Oh,” Luvander whimpered, his shoulders relaxing like a house of cards coming apart, “good. That's... good. I was, I nearly, that is... I thought you were.”

Ivory couldn't quite bring himself to say “be a bit hypocritical if that had been the reason,” so he hugged his knees closer to his chest and forced out another confession instead: “Raphael walked in on Aria and me on Saturday.”

Luvander drew in a sharp breath and straightened up, his empty mug still cradled in his hands.

“Fuck,” he said. “That's... fuck. What happened?”

“Nothing,” Ivory shrugged unhappily. “He just fell over himself getting back out again. But, you know, there was. We were. Nothing? And he saw? That?”

“Fuck,” Luvander said again, and ran the edge of his thumb along a crease in the mat they were using as a sofa. “Is he, though... I mean, would he tell anyone? I went for a walk with him yesterday, he didn't mention it to me. Just talked a lot about poetry.”

Ivory swallowed, the thought of Luvander and Raphael strolling through the woods chattering about something he had no understanding of whatsoever tightening the knot behind his stomach like twine around the neck of a sack. “Nice,” he said, flat and disinterested. “I don't know. I hope not, but. He's friends with Amery and Niall. Who knows.”

“Well,” Luvander mused, “it's not exactly horrendously scandalous. You could've been done with her real quick, or maybe dirty talk's your thing beforehand, building up an atmosphere with words before you get to any touching, you know? You can spin it, if he does tell anyone, turn it around into a why-was-he-trying-to-join-in joke, if you want.”

“I don't want,” Ivory said sharply. “I don't even want to talk about him, much less make _jokes._ ”

“Okay,” Luvander nodded. “Wait, aren't you flying with him on Wednesday?”

Ivory nodded glumly. Of all the Raphael-related things he'd been trying not to think about, that was the one he was most keen to avoid. He had a suspicious, nauseating feeling that there might just be something about Raphael in action which would make everything Maxwell and Sebastian had been laughing about irrevocably true in exactly the way they'd intended it. Raphael-the-disastrous-dormmate was bad enough, with his kind intentions and stupid hair, the way he spilled sideways out of bed and made those pathetic little noises and twitched when he was dreaming. Not that Ivory had _watched_. Raphael-the-dragon-pilot, in his gloves and goggles and that _fucking_ leather jacket, no doubt, since they didn't have their uniforms yet; Raphael-the-actual-fucking-airman with his legs astride Natalia's flanks and his shoulders braced against the wind... Ivory swallowed, hard, forcing his throat to remember how to move. That was going to be a problem, he could tell.

“Him and Ghislain and Magoughin,” he remembered to answer Luvander. “I'll have to up my scary,” he decided with a smile like the last weak sunshine on a spring afternoon, “since I haven't got the brawn of half of one of them.”

“That won't matter when you're up there,” Luvander told him. “Your girl'll look after you.”

“Mm,” Ivory nodded, once, and hoped he was right. He couldn't remember exactly the way Cassiopeia sounded, and was looking forward to being reminded, even if the rest of Wednesday already looked like a specially designed torture.

~

It got worse.

On Wednesday, it rained. Thremedon had been built on tiers to help handle its excessive rainfall in all seasons save summer and the very depths of coldest, iciest winter; everything washed clean down from Miranda to the Mollydocks, where nobody with the power to do anything about it cared how sludgy and vile things got. The rain wasn't the problem – Adamo told them they'd be flying in all weathers when they were needed so they'd better get their precious selves used to it and grow a thicker skin. It was cold and unpleasant, but it was not the rain which had set Ivory's pulse quickening at his temples. It was the pale flicker of another distant thunderstorm up over the mountains, and Ghislain's cheerful finger-lick wind-test and declaration that “yep, storm's headed this way, Chief. About four hours, I reckon.”

It was easy to forget that Ghislain had been a sailor, until he pulled shit like that.

Cassiopeia purred like a cat when she saw Ivory, and they spent a couple of minutes getting wordlessly reacquainted with each other, but those were apparently enough for Cassiopeia to pick up on the tension laced into Ivory's spine like a too-tight corset. Ivory tried some of the relaxation exercises Sebastian had shown him during that period of his adolescence when he'd been permanently wound up and lashing out at everyone, just so that Cassiopeia would stop raking her spiked tail nervously against the walls of her bay, because she was sensitive like that, and it wasn't her fault that her rider was in bad shape. When Adamo gave the signal, Cassiopeia dived gracefully into the merciless sleet, and Ivory let her work her way upwards in a wet spiral until they were circling above the other dragons, meeting the clouds head-on.

To Ivory's surprise and relief, he and Raphael seemed to work well together in the air.

It was raining too hard to make out much detail beyond a glittery smudge of the city and the darker silhouettes of forests and mountains in the distance, let alone be distracted by Raphael's leather jacket, so Ivory simply focused on Adamo's shouted commands and the soothing presence of the two crushers rising and falling on their sides like battleships. It soon became clear that the thing Ivory enjoyed most about flying was getting to burn things, and Cassiopeia razed down every target Adamo, Ghislain and Magoughin threw their way without fail, steam rising in curls from her snout as her fire made the rainwater evaporate. There was an obstacle course in the grounds behind the Airman, and Adamo and the others made Raphael and Natalia race through it while counting a series of target objects, and Ivory had to follow and take down projectiles, because a lot of the time, this would be part of their job: making sure the swifts got through enemy lines intact. When they reached the end of the parkour, the only thing Adamo had to criticize was that Raphael had only counted thirty of the thirty-one catapults stationed throughout the course, and that Ivory had accidentally burned a branch that had come loose from a tree in the wind before he'd realised that it wasn't one of the projectiles.

Turned out that thunder wasn't nearly so upsetting anymore when you were riding the storm on a great big metal beast, either, but then Adamo motioned for them all to get back inside the Airman, and Ivory wished he could just not get off Cassiopeia ever again; fall asleep cradled safely between the spikes on her back and wake up when his clothes were dry and the weather had calmed down and fly out once more, just the two of them.

At least he wasn't the only one shaking when they dismounted. Raphael nearly fell over. Ivory felt the storm shuddering up over the city, boiling clouds on one side of the building hurling rain that seemed increasingly violent now he was on the ground again. Ghislain was laughing his own thunder of amusement, patting Raphael's shoulder and telling him that everyone had trouble walking when they first came down; he'd get his sea legs soon enough.

“Flight legs,” Magoughin shouted, flicking a glove at Ghislain's head. “You've swapped the sea for the air, you need to update your lingo.”

“Whatever,” Ghislain chuckled, grabbing Magoughin and tucking his head under his arm so he could rub his knuckles into his hair. They bantered out of the enclosures, bracketed in low laughter that hung heavy with the smoke and thick, wet canvas of their uniforms. Ivory envied their easy, loose friendship, and turned to lay a trembling hand on Cassiopeia's neck as the thunder cracked closer and he realised he was now alone with the dragons, the handlers, and Raphael.

“You're shaking,” Cassiopeia pointed out, her voice a thin wisp of a thing that curled out between her cogs, right next to his ear.

“I'm fine,” he lied.

“You can't fool me with your human artifice,” she rumbled. “Whatever it is that's making you quiver, burn it or bury it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Burn it,” she repeated, swinging her neck round to stare at him with one glittering eye, “set it aflame or set it on fire, whichever you prefer. Or bury it and never let it make you afraid again.”

Ivory thought about that as he made his way to the showers, following Adamo's directions without paying attention, and looking forward to scrubbing his skin clean. The soot itched now he was aware of it. He ran the water warm for once, where he usually preferred it cold, and stepped under the spray wondering what, exactly, was the difference between setting something on fire and setting it aflame. Tipping his head back so that the water ran down his throat the way the rain ran down the spires of the Basquiat, Ivory closed his eyes and tried to shake the groundling concerns from his shoulder blades; dragged his mind back to how none of those things had mattered in the air: not Saturday night, not his brothers' taunts, not the storm, and definitely not Raphael and his damnable shoulders.

And then the bathroom door swung open and of course, Raphael needed to shower too, and this wasn't even as dubiously private as the communal cubicles in the barracks. The showers at the Airman were palatial: a long, tiled room with a gently sloping floor bisected with a gully that collected and drained the soot-grey water. There were adjustable shower heads at various points around the walls, and not just temperature dials but controls for spray width and intensity, too. It was fancy and delightful and no doubt what the Esar thought his elite soldiers deserved (or perhaps what he'd been told they required after the men came in from their first raids). Ivory was pleased with it, because while it was, in fact, more open than the showers at their training barracks, it felt less invasive, and generally _cleaner_. Luvander had warned him, explaining about his avoidance tactics, but Ivory had forgotten.

Raphael, however, looked rather unhappy when he saw the different layout. He was a bit peculiar about being naked around other people, a fact that Amery and Niall had immediately picked up on like bloodhounds tracking a scent. Their teasing and pranking had, of course, only served in making Raphael even more paranoid about taking his clothes off, and Ivory, who did not have the same problems but could at least understand about wanting to keep private business private, felt almost sorry for him every time Amery or Niall flung his shower curtain aside and squirted shampoo at him while singing rude songs at the top of their lungs.

Ivory turned pointedly away when Raphael fiddled nervously with his towel in the doorway, not because he cared about giving Raphael more privacy, but because he still had no desire whatsoever to talk to him, and Ghislain and Magoughin had been held up talking strategy for their next raids with Adamo. He washed his hair facing the tiled wall and tried not to listen to the sound of the shower being turned on at the other end of the room and the splashing that indicated that Raphael was doing the same. Ivory did not have the same troubles as Luvander did in communal showers, seeing as he rarely ever got aroused enough for it to be clearly visible. He wasn't _worried_ , no matter what his brothers had said. Only thinking about Luvander made him think of what Luvander had done with Niall in the showers back at the barracks, and then Raphael dropped something and nearly slipped on the tiles and that made him do one of his _noises_ , and Ivory was suddenly and inexplicably reminded of the fact that the last time he'd masturbated had been months ago, when he'd still been home, and even someone who only rarely got aroused still did get aroused _sometimes_.

Well, this was... awkward.

“Um, hey Ivory?” Raphael said, once again unaware of just how much Ivory did not want him to talk to him right now. Ivory quickly snapped the temperature dial to cold and closed his eyes against the deluge of icy water sluicing over his head, holding his breath. “I just wanted to, well. I wanted to apologise again for what happened on Saturday? And with the letter? Because you seem kind of... mad at me?”

“Right,” Ivory ground out through clenched teeth, scraping soot out from between his fingers.

“I really didn't mean to walk in on you two. I promise I didn't even see anything. Or if I did, I don't have a clue what you were doing, so it's almost like I didn't see anything, right? It's none of my business, anyway. I just. Please don't be mad at me.”

“I'm not mad at you,” Ivory sighed, paying a lot less attention to the words than to trying to un-hear Raphael's desperate, needy voice. What had before Sunday been merely an irritation, slightly pleading notes that got stuck in Ivory's head and made him want to snap bones, had become an even bigger irritation that made him want to run his hand down Raphael's back and work the knots out of his anxious, fretful spine. He wanted to knead and ease his fingers against Raphael's skin, play him like the piano, work out what to push to get a lower, smoother, softer sound. “Stop talking about it,” he added, frustrated with himself.

“Okay,” Raphael agreed quickly, and promptly dropped something again. “Fuck,” he said sadly, and Ivory gritted his teeth; there were words he didn't need to hear and then there were words he really, _really_ didn't need to hear while he was half-aroused in the showers with Raphael.

“So, um,” Raphael chattered on, “today was pretty amazing, yeah? I mean... we were really good. Don't you think? Did you enjoy it? Maybe we'll get put on raids together and stuff and, ha, well, anyway I mean I'd feel better... safer... anyway, going out with you with the... the fire and everything and... that. I'm a bit scared of fire,” he laughed nervously, and Ivory scrubbed at a stubborn scorched dark streak inside his elbow. He had no idea how it had even got there. “Ivory?”

“What?”

“Did you have a good time on Sunday? With your brothers?”

“Seriously?” Ivory snorted. And again: “ _Seriously_?”

Raphael let out a tiny giggle, sweet and clean like a soap bubble bursting in the back of his throat, and that was it; suddenly they were both laughing, the sound echoing between them on the tiles, and Ivory was starting to tremble under the cold water, but somehow that only made him laugh harder, until his ribs were aching and stomach was cramping and Raphael had even sat down on the pristine floor.

“I did, actually,” Ivory finally admitted, quiet and amused, and a little bit astonished as well.

“Good, that's good,” Raphael wheezed as he picked himself up off the floor again, then had to bend down once again because he'd left the shampoo bottle there. “They looked nice. Scary... but nice, you know?”

“Strangely enough, I do,” Ivory sighed, once more checking his body for any further traces of soot that had inexplicably got underneath his clothes and which he might've missed before.

“I really miss my siblings,” Raphael said in a small voice then, and Ivory had to pretend to rub at a non-existent soot smear on his stomach to make it stop tying itself in knots over that helpless little whine. “I mainly signed up so I could send the money home for my brother, so he'd have a real shot at the whole 'Versity thing, you know? But sometimes I think... well. Just, maybe I should've stayed. Spent more time with them. I don't know. I thought for sure I was going to crash-land Natalia the minute she took off today.”

“No,” Ivory told him, “no, I don't think you can crash-land a dragon unless she doesn't want you near her. You looked fine to me,” he added, thinking about that first glimpse of Raphael and Natalia, when they'd all been already up in the clouds and Cassiopeia was breezing delighted steel laughter at being out of her pen. Ivory had a moment to look across and see the way Raphael and Natalia flew together and it had all made sense: the rhythmic, poetic sweep of her wings a perfect blank page for Raphael to be written all over in curls and flourishes and big, safe hands. Ivory caught his breath, remembering. He'd only had a second to see, but he wasn't going to be forgetting. “You looked fine,” he said again, quietly, watching the water drain away from between his own toes.

“Really?” Raphael asked. “Thanks.”

Ivory nodded, and the bathroom door clattered open to admit the twin human palisades of Ghislain and Magoughin, the latter whistling through his teeth while Ghislain kept an arm braced around his shoulders and prattled on about whatever strategy they'd been talking with Adamo.

“Come on now, lads,” he broke off to say, “you've had your time, go on, off you pop. Leave some water for the big boys.”

~

The Saturday was reserved for uniform measurements and fittings. This process would take up considerable time, seeing as they all needed several sets of fireproof riding gear as well as more fancy official attire, so all they had scheduled that day was the usual morning run and some more first aid instruction after breakfast. Luvander was quite cheerful about this, since it meant not having to crawl around in the mud after Amery and Niall; all he would have to do was stand around and look pretty while other people did the work. He was going to use the time to daydream about Yesfir, and to think up a story about dragons and dashing young heroes and their unspeakably gorgeous lovers that he could tell Holly later that night.

They were called into a room that had been set up for the tailors in sets of two. Evariste and Merritt went first, and Luvander nearly choked on his peas over lunch when Evariste recounted the story of how Merritt had managed to get a total of ten pins stuck in his butt with his fidgeting.

“What a nuisance,” Evariste chuckled, spreading more butter on his already supremely buttery potatoes. Merritt was jabbing somewhat listlessly at his meat with his fork, his ears and face a hot, splotchy red, and Luvander swallowed down his laughter and made sure to place the basket of toasted bread within Merritt's reach, because if there was one thing that always seemed to cheer Merritt up, it was toasted bread.

“I bet he won't be the only one who ends up with a pin or two in his arse today, though,” Luvander said loudly. “I mean, I can think of a few people who, say, might not be able to keep themselves from making tasteless remarks about the tailor's pretty lady assistant, and if anyone wants to bet on how long Ace will manage to actually stand still, well, my money's on not at all.”

Merritt shot him a grateful look from under his messy fringe, and Luvander winked at him when everyone else was busy hashing out the new sweepstake, with Ace cheerfully joining in himself to throw his money in with Luvander. When his name was called for the measuring just after lunch, Luvander marched into the room humming one of Niall's tunes to himself, and realised promptly that he'd been wrong about one thing: the tailor's assistant was pretty, alright, but he definitely wasn't a lady.

Also, he hadn't been paying attention, and now here he was in a room with Niall and a very pretty, very male tailor's assistant who was asking them both politely to strip off whilst waving around a cushion stuck full of pins. Niall threw Luvander an unhelpful wink as he started unbuttoning his shirt. “I'll bet you say that to all the boys,” he sang at the assistant, who was busy arming himself with layers of calico and had just looped a measuring tape around his neck.

“Pretty much,” he agreed cheerfully. “You must be Airman Niall.”

“Did they warn you about me?” Niall smirked, and Luvander felt a hot flare of jealousy catch alight on the brewing horror in his stomach. It was one thing knowing that Niall was making his way through all the girls in the brothel on Saturday nights (“because I can't be like you, I'm sorry, I can't just meet one and have it be special and be sold on a favourite without sampling all the wares, that's just not, no. No.”) Watching him flirt with another man while Luvander was standing right there was a whole separate story, however, made worse by the fact that Niall wasn't even cindy, or at least not publicly or all the way.

“They most certainly did,” the tailor's assistant was saying as he squinted at a reel of cream linen and made a note on some parchment with a stubby pencil. “They warned me you were the taller one who'd talk more. Are you undressed yet? Up on the stool, then.”

Luvander watched, his annoyance escalating, as Niall teased and flirted and _giggled_ at the man taking his measurements, obediently stretching his arms out and not looking the slightest bit guilty when he received a rap on the knuckles with the tailor's chalk for not keeping his fingers still. He preened and he pandered in turns, and Luvander could feel his neck growing warm despite having already loosened his shirt. The twittering, tinselly patter of Niall's verbal tickling scattered like broken glass through his brain, tiny and treacherous and fucking everywhere. By the time it was his turn to strip off his shirt and step up on the stool, Luvander was a) furious, b) vaguely, angrily aroused, and c) determined to prove to Niall that he wasn't the only one who knew how to charm the pants off a man.

“Airman Luvander, I'm assuming,” the assistant smiled.

“At your service,” Luvander smiled, “do we get your name, or is it a trade secret?”

~

Niall felt let down on three counts that Saturday night. Firstly, his successful tailor's assistant seduction act had apparently been nothing but a warm up for Luvander to waltz up on the stand and get the assistant's name, a promised discount from his master's store, and an invitation to stop by “any time”. Niall had ground his teeth and felt unnecessary, unsure of why exactly he needed to stay in the room and watch this display now that he'd been weighed and measured, thank you very much. Apparently the assistant – whose name, it turned out, was George – had been privy to their medical charts, because he had some very complimentary things to say about Luvander's body mass, and Niall had sighed so loudly he couldn't hear the end of that sentence.

Secondly, he'd have been lying if he'd said he wasn't hoping for round three in the showers before they headed out. Niall wasn't fussy about where he got his rocks off so long as it was clean. Ladies were easier to pay for than men, so he stuck with that most of the time, but if a chap was willing, Niall wasn't going to say no. There was nothing in the world Niall enjoyed so much as undoing someone else with a skilful, delicious orgasm – or there hadn’t been, until he’d met Erdeni. And he was intrigued by Luvander with his fairy-lightness and his intrinsic good taste for cut and style and colour, evident in the clothes he owned and the dashing way he wore them. He wasn't the sort of man Niall would have pegged for falling in love with a girl from a whorehouse, however well her waist fit between the palms of his hands. Luvander wasn't the sort of man Niall would have pegged for falling in love with a girl at all, but the world was full of surprises, and really, what he was interested in about the whole affair was how sex in a brothel could ever be _that_ special. Exciting, yes, he knew all about that. Excellent, satisfying, unusual: Niall had all these experiences and more under his belt, but he was missing _special_ and he wanted details. He also liked the little shivery thrill, the challenge of keeping an orgasm quiet while the other guys were half a tiled wall away; the spice of secrecy between the two of them. He was disappointed with a warm crush like ginger in his fingers to find himself showering alone this week.

Thirdly, Luvander didn't come out at all. Apparently Ivory had a headache. Niall hopped from one foot to the other with irritation, because what had Ivory having a headache got to do with Luvander refraining from another night with his mistress? Until he added “also, last week was, um – fuck, I don't even remember, I was so slaughtered, I don't actually think I can show my face down there again just yet. Need an extra week to let the dust settle.”

“That is fair, mate,” Amery snorted with laughter, clapping Luvander on the shoulder and smoothing a wayward strand of his precious hair with the other hand. “You were shameful.”

“I'll bet,” Luvander cringed. Niall wanted to correct this: he hadn't been shameful. Roaring drunk and completely incomprehensible, yes, but not a howling public embarrassment. Another thought caught up with him before he'd said any of this, however.

“Is she angry with you?” he asked. “Your girl, is she – has she got her knickers in a twist over you getting wasted?”

Luvander looked at him then like he was a man overboard and Niall had just tossed him a lifebelt. “Yeah,” he murmured, and schooled his face into contrition. “Reckon she needs another week to cool down, you know?”

“No worries,” Niall shot him a grin. “Next week then. If I see her I'll put in a good word for you,” he added as he followed Amery and Evariste down the stairs; missing the way Luvander's relief was blotted from his face with a sudden bleak curtain of distress.

If Holly was free – and he strongly suspected she would be – then it was not just a good word for Luvander that Niall was intending to put in there.

~

Ivory did have a headache, though it wasn't as bad as they usually were. His eyes ached, like something heavy was pressing on them from inside his skull, but it wasn't quite so bad he was seeing funny, and although he felt nauseous, he hadn't thrown up. Usually, when they hit, they did so with all the force of Cassiopeia knocking something out with her tail; crashing into his skull when he opened his eyes in the morning and raging there until the sun went down. Ivory had been drunk exactly two times in his life, and both occasions had resulted in headaches that had trampled his usual into glittering, party-sized specks in the dust beneath their heels, which was one reason he didn't drink alcohol. He'd been praying that he might have a respite from the headaches altogether until they were moved into the Airman where he would at least have a private room, but apparently the gods weren't listening to Ivory lately. Still, it could have been worse. It wasn't quite the atrocious, hiding-in-a-dark-room-weeping sort, and at least it was on a Saturday when everyone was going out and he could spend Sunday recovering.

“Poor baby,” Luvander was crooning down at him. Ivory was lying on the sofa in the common room with his head in Luvander's lap and his feet in Ace's, but thankfully, they'd both learned their lesson about touching him, and so Luvander was flipping idly through one of Raphael's books and Ace was keeping his hands occupied by having them re-enact one of the training exercises with the dragons.

“Hey, Ace?” Luvander said suddenly, putting the book down on Ivory's chest. It smelled like parchment and smoke from a fireplace, and Ivory missed Raphael's soothing voice and big hands and soft, candle-wax eyes. “How come the others never give you shit for staying home on Saturday nights?”

“Ahh, I reckon it's cos I don't make a big deal out of it,” Ace said wisely, and flopped back against the sofa cushions with his arms above his head so as not to touch Ivory. “They just like picking on you cos you're always so awkward and obvious about not wanting to go.”

There was a high-pitched, semi-outraged protest from Luvander that Ivory didn't quite catch because he was spreading the book out over his face to block out the light. If he inhaled really, really deeply, it almost smelled like Raphael.

“Is he hyperventilating?” someone asked, and Ivory tossed the book away so he could glare at them, groaning when his stomach roiled angrily.

“...enjoy the gossip,” Luvander was saying, his voice sharpening into words again in Ivory's head, and Ivory stopped groping around for the book on the floor and raised his head a little.

“Damn, I forgot to tell you,” he mumbled, poking his index finger into Luvander's chest. “Got some nice gossip for you that you'll enjoy. It's about Holly and Aria.”

“What about Holly and Aria?” Luvander asked slowly and pointedly looked toward his right, but Ivory didn't know why, because there was only his right shoulder, and it wasn't nearly as nice as Raphael's.

“I think they're, you know,” Ivory whispered. “ _You_ know. In feelings with each other? Aria as good as told me.”

“They're in _what_?!” Luvander shouted, sitting up so abruptly that Ivory almost went tumbling off the sofa. He groaned and pawed at Luvander's waistcoat, and Luvander settled down again, breathing heavily. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

“Mmm,” Ivory moaned, tentatively rubbing at one temple with the tips of two of his fingers. The slight pressure felt like a hot poker to his skull.

“Oh, man,” Ace sighed, and Ivory swallowed sharply, having forgotten he was there at all. Oops. “Sucks to be you, Luvander.”

“No but, I mean,” Luvander ignored this and wriggled and Ivory really wished he wouldn't. “Obviously it would make sense, I remember, she said something about – I remember that, the first night we went there and, bastion, Ivory what did she say, _exactly_?”

“Ugh,” Ivory swatted at the air in front of his face. “I can't remember. Words.”

“ _What_ words?”

“Stay sti-i-i-i-ll,” Ivory whined pathetically.

“He might if you magically remember the words,” Ace suggested, back to making swooping attack manoeuvres in the air with his hands in front of his face, complete with whispered, gleeful sound effects. “Whooooosh, _boooom_! There goes another bastard Ke'Han mage!”

Ivory sighed and tried to clear a pathway through the painful noise of his brain back to whatever it was Aria had been saying right before Raphael had come in. “Something about... interest, and,” he swallowed thickly, thinking about the light from the chandelier tumbling through Raphael's finger-messy curls. “Um, that she was – she was asking, she didn't really. She wanted to know if you were really, um. Seeing her. You know?”

“Course he is,” Ace snorted, “she came up here to give him grief about not staying long enough, remember? They're practically sweethearts. _Nyoooom, aaaand, fire!”_ one of his hands opened in a spray of fingers. “ _Everywhere_!”

“Shiiiiiiiit,” Luvander breathed, tilting his head back as far as it went and staring at the ceiling. “Shit shit shit.”

“What are you gonna do, Luvander?” Ace asked cheerfully. “Ask if they'd be interested in a Luvander sandwich? Oh, _Luvandwich_! Neat!”

He was still chanting _Luvandwich_ by the time Raphael stumbled into the common room with rain in his hair and some parchment clutched in his hand.

“Oh,” he said, as per usual, and half-sat, half-tripped in the armchair next to the sofa, the one that was closest to Ivory's head. “Sorry. Can I join you?”

“Luvander's whore has a whore girlfriend,” Ace informed him merrily, and lobbed one of the monstrosities at him that he'd been folding out of paper (apparently they were supposed to be dragons, although Ivory's suggestion of them looking more like toads had been met with equal enthusiasm - “great metal flying fire-breathing toads! Yesss!”).

“Oh,” Raphael said _a-fucking-gain_ , and Ivory groaned faintly from where he was currently hiding behind his hands.

“Ace, if you tell anyone else, I will snap your fucking neck in your sleep,” Luvander hissed, but quickly corrected himself to “I will eat all your crumpets at breakfast” because Ace was looking far too delighted at the prospect of neck-snapping. He made a sad mumbly comment about crumpets and went back to his paper toads, while Raphael looked supremely uncomfortable, though Ivory was starting to suspect that maybe that was just his default facial expression.

“How's your headache doing, Ivory?” Raphael asked gently. There was a sharp intake of breath from Luvander for some reason, and Ace made more explosions with his mouth, looking gleeful, and it took Ivory a long minute to notice that Raphael was stroking his hair, and that he was leaning into it instead of lurching for his knives. Oops.

“Very pain,” Ivory muttered, horrified at himself when he actually pouted a little bit and rubbed his head against Raphael's fingertips rather than pulling away and saving face. “Much ow.”

Luvander wondered abruptly if he was very in the way, much should move.

“Hey, Ace?” he whispered. “Fancy a raid on the kitchens?”

“Do I ever,” Ace grinned, slithering out from under Ivory's legs the wrong way, down to the floor feet first so he almost got his face stuck under Ivory's knees.

Luvander very delicately removed himself from the other end of the sofa, letting Ivory's head slide from his lap into the waiting cup of Raphael's palm, and sidling out sideways. He raised an eyebrow at Raphael, who wasn't even looking at him, frowning down at Ivory in concern instead as he slid his fingers into the pale twist of his hair and rubbed fragile, soothing circles. As Luvander and Ace sneaked out of the room, Luvander could have sworn he heard a minute little moan stumble from between Ivory's lips, and it sounded nothing at all like the headache sadness complaint noises he'd been making earlier.

“Oh man, did you see that?” Ace laughed as he ricocheted down the corridor. “Raphael has broken the Ice Queen! He's like the fair prince that broke the curse and gets to steal himself a kiss! Wonder how he did that? Too bad for Raph that headache probably means a shag's out of the question tonight. Hey, Luvander, watch this, I'm going to slide down the banister, here I go.”

Luvander was too dazed to even try and stop him. Fortunately, the resultant crash when Ace toppled off the end of the banister rail was only a minor incident compared to some of his horrible attempts at defying gravity and common sense, and he got up giggling, brushing the dust off his trousers. “Come on, come on,” he bounced around in the stairwell as Luvander lingered on the stairs. “Race you, winner gets the first slice of toast!”

~

Back in the common room, Ivory's headache was winding down, twisting itself up into Raphael's fingertips and being softly, slowly massaged out of his skull. This was unprecedented. Ivory slowly blinked his eyes open to find Raphael crouched awkwardly on the floor next to the sofa, watching him with a tiny frown of concentration, while underneath his fingers, the pain was burning down to glowing embers in Ivory's temples.

“Thanks,” Ivory said quietly, because he was too surprised to even be angry about Raphael breaking the no touching rule. Raphael shrugged softly, and his fingers eased into stroking his hair again.

“My sister gets them, too,” he muttered, tucking a stray curl behind Ivory's ear and shifting to trace Ivory's cheekbone with his broad thumb.

“You're different than the others,” Ivory said, echoing Raphael's own words from a few weeks ago back at him, and Raphael's mouth quirked up on one side like a boat being jostled by an unexpected wave.

“Good different or bad different?” he asked, somewhat breathlessly, and Ivory smiled back.

“Just different.”

“Oh.”

The word lingered in a round, pursed shape on Raphael's lips, and Ivory very much wanted to kiss it off him, fold that pretty little mouth into other shapes and other sounds, give that “oh” a different context.

“You say that a lot, you know,” he said instead, because apparently his brain-to-mouth filter wasn't quite restored yet.

“Oh,” Raphael said, then blushed violently. “Shit, you're right. I'm sorry.”

“Don't be,” Ivory mumbled, and kept watching Raphael's lips.

“You're staring,” Raphael whispered, a snowy hush of a sound which was the antithesis of accusatory.

Ivory said “mm” and continued.

Raphael's fingers were still tiptoeing through the hair next to Ivory's ear, his thumb still soft and warm on Ivory's cheek. His touch was light, cautious, respectful; unlike the way Ivory had usually encountered other people's skin, which was always abrasive and unapologetic. He wanted to ask Raphael why he hadn't gone with the others, or why he'd come back early, but the words sat fat and useless in the back of his mouth, out of place in the quiet warmth and unexpected intimacy of the common room. The slim fire that Luvander had stoked up earlier – not too warm because it made Ivory's head worse – simmered and prickled, the last embers an unhurried glow amongst the wood and ash.

He watched Raphael's mouth and the way his face settled into a knitted blanket of comfort and concern as his fingers walked their gentle path through Ivory's hair and down, around to the nape of his neck. The little pulse of pressure there, at the base of his hairline and the top of his spine, made Ivory's head tilt and his lips part in a tiny secret of a sigh that crested a shiver he couldn't quite suppress. Raphael stilled, his eyes widening like he'd just met his girl for the very first time. “Are you alright?” he asked, his voice a low murmur of tea-leaves and dry kindling.

“Can you kiss me,” Ivory whispered, his mouth making the words before his brain was ready.

Raphael froze, his pupils blown in the low light of the fire, and they looked at each other for a long moment, a tip-toed, breathless sliver of a minute, suspended and on tenterhooks like a dragon about to take flight. Ivory thought he saw Raphael lean forward in the split second before the door crashed open to a barrage of drunk singing and sharp, gingery laughter, which made Ivory wince at the renewed flare of pain in his temples, and Raphael lurch backwards and land flat on his bum in surprise.

“For fuck's sake can't you keep it down!”

It took Ivory a moment to realise that the outburst had come from Raphael, still in an ungainly sprawl on the floor, but red-faced and angry now, and the group of rowdy airmen fell abruptly silent. Amery and Niall seemed to each be trying to clamp their hands over each other's mouths while fighting off the other, and there was a tiny, nervous giggle from Compagnon at the back of the group, and some frantic shuffling on Merritt's end, but otherwise, they had actually, for once in their lives, all managed to shut up at the same time.

“You all complain about the tiniest bit of noise when you crawl out of bed hungover and reeking of all kinds of unsavoury things on Sunday mornings, and that's your own damn fault even, so show some bloody respect when someone's poorly, will you? Fucking wankers,” Raphael snapped, then, as suddenly as it had come, all the righteous rage seemed to drain out of him again, leaving him sagging against the armchair. He pulled himself up laboriously, glared at Amery and Niall, and swept from the room without another word, which was so uncharacteristic of him that the silence lasted several more minutes, until Raphael's footsteps had long since faded away in the corridor.

“That was...” Evariste said, sounding awed.

“Weirdly hot,” Niall mumbled through Amery's fingers. There was a loud slurping noise, and Amery snatched his hand away from Niall's mouth with a hearty expression of disgust. “Mm, Amy, you taste like Ke'Han wine.”

“Fuck you,” Amery said, wiping his hand on his trousers.

“Just because I have a headache doesn't mean I can't still gut you with the poker,” Ivory announced lazily from the sofa and waved the object in question around for demonstrational purposes. Merritt let out a terrified squeak and hid behind Evariste, who rolled his eyes and sighed as Merritt somehow still managed to step on Ev's foot in the process, and then Ghislain and Magoughin, who'd been lurking and smirking at the back of the group, began herding the others toward the door.

“Where has that Luvander got off to?” Niall mused as their voices started to fade away down the corridor. “Wasn't he supposed to look after our knife-wielding snow prince?”

Ivory violently shoved his face into the nearest cushion and tried not to miss the soothing cadence of Raphael's fingers in his hair so much. After all, there was a good chance that he would never get to experience that again, judging by the hasty retreat Raphael had made after the whole “can you kiss me” fiasco. Ivory amused himself by imagining what he'd write to his brothers, if he could make more than a handful of crooked letters yet: _Dear Maxwell and Sebastian, you'll be pleased to know that your little brother has once again managed to disgrace himself spectacularly in front of the one person he can actually stand to be around for more than ten minutes at a time in this hell-hole..._


	7. Lesson Seven: Secrets, and the Equipment Required for Keeping Them

Luvander wasn’t sure which he was most distressed by: the fact that Niall had slept with Holly or the fact that Holly had slept with Niall. “Aren’t they the same thing,” Ivory asked him, tired and grey in the residual wasteland of his headache on Sunday morning. Luvander tried not to fidget. 

“Not at all,” he insisted. “I mean, it’s her job, if someone asks and she’s free and they pay then it’s her job, so, I suppose, really it’s worse that he asked for her given that we’re...” he stopped, swallowed, tasted Niall in the showers burnt into the back of his tongue. “Well, I’m supposed to have some...thing... with her, and...”

“But you actually have something with him,” Ivory filled in the blanks. 

“Mmn,” Luvander twitched, biting a thumbnail. “Except not.” 

“Except yes.” 

“Except not.” 

“Except yes, three times, one of which we’re not talking about. My point,” Ivory sighed, hands carefully cradling his mug of tea which he’d brought out onto the front steps with him where he and Luvander were sitting, soaking up some of the sunlight lying fallow on the training grounds. “My point is that he fucked up on all accounts.”

Luvander made a miserable noise and slumped forwards, his forehead braced against his knees. He’d had crumpets, at some point, pilfered from the mess hall when Ace wasn’t looking, but somehow they were gone now.

“If you want me to stab him, I’m still game,” Ivory said, so briskly and seriously that Luvander more than believed him.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” he whimpered, and nearly said I just wish he’d stab me with something instead. While he was sure Niall would appreciate the dirty joke, he was also quite sure he wouldn’t be so amused by the actual implication. It was just as well, though, because the front door opened at that moment, and out spilled a haphazard crew of airmen with faces still blotchy from sleep and hangovers painted in blues and purples underneath their eyes, and Luvander pressed his lips together and nodded as they passed. Niall wasn’t with them, luckily or unluckily; but for some reason, Ivory winced when he caught sight of Raphael in their midst, and ducked down further behind Luvander.

“Alright, boys?” Magoughin called over, winking at them. “Want to join us on a walk into town? Raphael says he knows a nice café with pretty waitresses who give him free coffee.”

He clapped a hand on Raphael’s shoulder and Raphael grimaced and looked away. Aware of the faint hum of tension in Ivory’s body next to him, Luvander quickly shook his head, and the group left without them, gently teasing Raphael about his waitresses and wondering when their uniforms would be ready so they could wear them to town and get even more things free. Raphael glanced over his shoulder at Ivory before the path made a right turn, and Ivory studiously stared at the ground.

“I thought you and Raphael were getting along?” Luvander asked Ivory once they were out of sight. Ivory sighed and covered half of his face with one hand, tugging slightly at his own hair in obvious discomfort. Then he turned to Luvander, his mouth a tight slant of unhappiness.

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Honestly?” Luvander winced himself, then, “I wish I could. You’ve seen how well I’ve managed so far, though.” 

“But can you keep other people’s secrets?” Ivory persisted, because it was one thing Luvander not being able to hide his own desires when, to be fair to him, people like Niall were flaunting them like peacock feathers everywhere anyway. Not being able to tuck attraction, that bodily thirst which their filthy, prancing comrades turned into a parched desperation, into his inner pockets and never shake them out in public wasn’t quite the same thing as wantonly broadcasting someone else’s confidences. 

Luvander sighed, and dropped his head back so his hair brushed his collar, squeezed his eyes up to make better shapes of the clouds and confessed: “nobody ever asked me to.” 

“I’m asking you now,” Ivory said, his voice pale like the last autumn sunlight. 

“I just,” Luvander struggled, “I… you know what, yes. Okay. Tell me your secrets.”

Ivory put his mug down, slowly so the chalky scrape of china on stone didn’t grate behind his eyelids. He pressed his lips together for a moment, reorganising the store of secrets in his head, methodically shuffling through like his life was a card game, seeking out the hand that was appropriate to deal in front of Luvander. Then, in a voice pitched so low it was barely audible, he said “after you and Ace went, last night, I think I asked Raphael to kiss me.” 

Helpfully, Luvander said “ah.” 

“What,” Ivory ran his fingers into his own hair and then abruptly removed them again because they weren’t Raphael’s and he didn’t want to remember that, except he did. “No flailing? No smug and you told me off last week?” he asked, humourlessly. “I’m disappointed.” 

“No, it’s just,” Luvander frowned, “that explains why you let him touch you.”

“It’s the headaches,” Ivory insisted. “They make me... well. They make me talk nonsense, like I’m drunk, or something.” He waved one hand in a loose, careful circle, keeping his movements simple and understated. His mind was a faded knot of sensory memories of fingers soothing at his skin, mingled with the fresh, heightened awareness of the present: the crisp scents of frost and fallen leaves; the stark white and green of the landscape and sky. Ivory didn’t remember what it was like to be drunk, but he had a feeling that mind fog and alarming, extraordinary sensory perception making sounds louder and colours painfully bright, wasn’t too far removed from an average morning after. 

“I see,” Luvander nodded, and Ivory watched him narrow his eyes down the sightline of the path in front of them. “Did he do it?”

“What?”

“Did he kiss you?”

“No, I,” Ivory remembered, acutely, that split second when he’d thought Raphael was going to. The tips of his fingers throbbed, the memory wedging itself fatly into an uncomfortably prominent seat in his mind. He shook his head, and regretted it when the paving shimmered afterwards. “No. He didn’t. Thankfully.” 

“At least Raph’s... you know,” Luvander shrugged. “Kind.”

“You mean he’s not likely to go making up nasty rhymes and rumours about my masculinity in spite of walking in on me very much not shagging a whore and me asking him to kiss me?” Ivory said, bitterly. 

“Well,” Luvander nudged him, soft and delicate with one pointy elbow. “Maybe rhymes. But they’ll be in the proper feet and meter and he’ll keep them to himself. Only thing more cindy than writing poetry is pillow-biting bumsex.” 

Ivory glowered at him, then slumped forwards again and closed his eyes against the crisp cotton of his shirt. He hadn’t noticed that he was shivering, but he couldn’t quite convince his body to get up yet and go back inside, where the fires would be blazing properly now, and the other airmen would be lounging around trying to steal toast off Merritt’s plate or saying disjointed things about last night like “oh man, those stockings, though” and sighing blissfully to themselves.

“Have you ever…” Ivory found himself mumbling, and Luvander made a choked noise.

“Um, no,” he whispered. “Why? Have you?”

Ivory just snorted a little laugh into his elbow. He hadn’t ever anything, the closest he’d come to being interested in someone that way had been that damned milkman that came round every couple of days when he’d been fifteen and discovering for the first time that he could get physically aroused. Nothing had happened between him and the milkman, but Maxwell and Sebastian had taken one look at him and known, somehow, and after they’d sat him down and explained a fair few things to him and told him about sixty times how it was all fine, Ivory had been too traumatised to even look at the milkman anymore, and usually stayed in his room when the delivery came.

“Hm, yeah,” Luvander said, quiet pebbly words making ripples in the silence, “to be honest, I’d kind of… got the impression that you don’t really do these things. At all. Was I right?”

“Maybe,” Ivory shrugged one shoulder, the movement as committed as he was prepared to be. He didn’t want to be talking about this any longer; didn’t want to be divulging any more than he already had. He’d slept in the common room last night, unable to face dragging himself through the tinny, echoing corridors and up the staircase to the dormitory, and doubly unable to deal with trying to sleep knowing Raphael was literally beneath him. Ivory knew from a long acquaintance with headaches that sleep was the only thing which really got rid of them, and after the head-rubbing, not-kissing and surprise anger from Raphael, he was never going to get a decent night in such close proximity. Most of the time, Ivory recoiled at the very idea of having someone else touch him, his skin prickling and muscles tensing at the thought. Occasionally, moments like last night or people like Raphael came along and made him ache with wanting to be touched everywhere. 

“Maybe,” Luvander echoed slyly, picking his dainty bird bones off the steps and brushing dust off, “you should find out.”

He winked, and Ivory stared after him, horrified, for a long, long time.

~

Luvander managed to avoid Niall for a grand total of half an hour after his talk with Ivory. Most of the others had gone into town, which was a blessing as much as it was a curse, because on the one hand, most of the barracks were empty, but on the other hand, most of the barracks were empty. Luvander fled from his dormitory after a violently hungover Evariste started a horrific row with a violently twitchy Merritt. He avoided the common room and the mess hall and especially the showers, which didn’t leave him much else than the corridors to pace, but those were too dangerous in case of a prowling Niall, so Luvander picked the lock on one of the training equipment rooms again and amused himself for a while scrawling inappropriate comments into the margins of one of Raphael’s books and indulging in a daydream or two that may or may not have featured himself, a single bed, and all of the other airmen.

The daydream was just starting to get interesting when the door clicked open.

“Huh, could’ve sworn that was locked yesterday… oh, hello, Luvander. What are you doing up there?”

Luvander had been lounging on top of a set of shelves holding all sorts of protective gear that was made of leather, because it was more comfortable than sitting on the cold floor, and the smell sort of… helped, with the fantasy. He nearly fell off the side when Niall stepped up to the shelf, looking cheerful and a bit curious and - not guilty at all, and Luvander felt a stab of anger deep inside his guts.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” he forced his tone into one of calculated disinterest and rolled his shoulders to face the grey breeze-block wall. The leather creaked under his elbow. 

“Sure you do,” Niall grinned, folding his arms on Luvander’s shelf and resting his chin on his forearms. “I’m your favourite. Right?” 

“Wrong,” Luvander told him, that small stab of anger wrenching open like one of Ivory’s knives had pierced his insides and was dragging up, opening a wound which bled confusion and frustration and bitter red jealousy. “You’re my least favourite. When you said you’d put in a good word did you just forget to mention you’d be doing that with your dick?” 

“You are missing a golden pun opportunity there about dictionaries,” Niall said, unhelpfully. 

“The only thing I’m missing is the energy required to punch you in the face,” Luvander was surprised to hear himself hissing, the words loaded with gunpowder vitriol he hadn’t been aware he’d possessed. Niall still looked cheerful and that made it worse, the crisp, sunflower edges of his smile like a bellows to the fire of Luvander’s curdling discontent. There were so many reasons he didn’t want to have this argument, so many ill-concealed secrets that flickered and twisted behind the flimsy basket lid of the charade he’d been trying so miserably to keep up, and Niall had already got too close to slipping through to the wrong side. Luvander was miserable at keeping things hidden and he was miserable about Niall and he was doubly, bitterly miserable about Niall visiting Holly. All of this added up to a scalding, disastrous, horrible landscape to wage war on. When it came to arguing, emotions had always been his disadvantage. “How fucking dare you?”

Niall pulled a face, his mouth tugging to the side and one shoulder shrugging. “Never had it special,” he said, casual like warm water and fresh air, like nothing mattered at all. “Wanted to give that a try. You know?”

“No,” Luvander said, coldly. “I don’t know.” 

“Well,” Niall’s grin was back, wolfish and hungry. “That’s funny. I asked her for whatever she did with you, told her I was looking for special and I’d heard she was the girl for that.” Luvander’s blood ran thin at that, ice in his veins as he pictured Holly sitting with her head on Niall’s shoulder like she did with him, explaining that he’d need to talk a whole lot about some boy he was in love with or she’d have nothing to work with. Except then Niall leaned in closer to murmur “think I preferred your mouth though, just saying,” his voice caramel and molasses, syrup-rich words that felt sticky on Luvander’s ear. 

He held his breath. 

“Hmm,” Niall said, drawing back again, his easy liquorice grin twisting into a gingery frown. “You’re still angry.”

“Damn fucking right I’m still angry,” Luvander growled and jumped off the shelf in one fluid motion. He needed to get as far away from Niall as possible, but at the same time he needed to get much, much closer, because he hadn’t got off since that last time and even the heat radiating off Niall’s body made his insides liquid with treacly desire.

No. What he really needed to do was end this whole ridiculous charade once and for all. He was just opening his mouth to tell Niall to leave him the fuck alone from now on when Niall spoke, one pacifying hand on Luvander’s shoulder, loose enough to shake off, yet impossible for Luvander to do so.

“Wait, Luvander,” Niall murmured, looking almost chastened now. “I didn’t realise it’d bother you so much. Let me make it up to you.”

When Luvander didn’t find the strength in him to refuse, Niall gently crowded him against the wall and ran one thumb over Luvander’s lips, tracing their shape, his eyes soft and glittering like velvet and sequins in low stage lighting.

“You know, you’re not the only one who can work wonders with his mouth,” Niall said suddenly and winked. Then he dropped swiftly on his knees, put his hands behind his back with a cheeky little upwards smirk and used his teeth to pry the buttons of Luvander’s fly out of their holes in an outrageous display of oral dexterity that didn’t bode well for Luvander’s prospects of staying furious and cold and aloof and away from Niall for bastion’s sake.

“I can’t fucking believe you,” Luvander bit out, his voice high-pitched like Raphael’s when Amery threatened to use his favourite poems as toilet paper, but then Niall had finished pulling his trousers and pants down with his teeth and the fact that Luvander was painfully, obviously hard quite diminished the effect of his words.

“Yeah, I know,” Niall muttered, licking his lips, “I’m unbelievable.”

Unbelievably good with his mouth was, perhaps, more accurate. There in the deserted equipment room, Niall gave Luvander the most mind-blowing blowjob of his whole miserable existence, easily obliterating all memories of Matthew in the stables, and Luvander had to bury his face in his hands and bite down on the heel of his palm to deal with the unbelievably silky slide of Niall’s lips around him, the unbelievably wicked ministrations of his tongue and the unbelievably, unfairly, unutterably unholy sensation of having Niall deep-throat him without even so much as a tiny warning.

When he came, once again humiliatingly fast, Luvander’s legs were trembling from foot to hip, and he spat a small, keening yelp into the cupped palms of his hands, feeling weak and amazed and vulnerable, and he kept his face hidden until Niall had buttoned his trousers back up and gently pried his hands away.

“Did I promise too much?”

“I hate you,” Luvander whimpered. 

“Yeah,” Niall whispered, his breath a warm, easy skitter across Luvander’s cheek. “I know.” 

“No,” Luvander shook his head, swallowing the grit and muck of embarrassment and pretence; feeling it lodge in his throat like wet wool. “No, that’s just the thing, you don’t know, you’ve got no idea. Where did you even come from,” he wanted to thump something, lash out and be destructive; take something perfect and make it irreparably imperfect, but his bones were still liquid and his heart still stammering out a different rhythm and Niall was still so very there. “Just – what are you,” he shook his head again on a snort, “what’s your deal?” 

“What do you mean?” Niall asked, running the back of one finger down Luvander’s cheek and under his jaw, resting his knuckles gently against his throat. When Luvander swallowed, he could feel the press and curve of Niall’s fingers. 

“This, this whole,” Luvander gestured pathetically at the two of them. “What is this? Is it some kind of power trip, or – or what? And if you say friendship,” he practically spat, “I will strangle you.” 

Something hard and heavy shone through Niall’s expression like bruised skin through threadbare wool, but it was gone in an instant, bounced off Niall’s shoulders in an easy shrug.

“No power trip,” Niall said, shaking his head. “Way I see it, we’re just helping each other out every once in a while. Seeing the girls is a real treat, but once a week isn’t nearly enough for guys like us, is it? So why not have a little arrangement on the side? So long as we’re both enjoying ourselves, no harm done, right?”

For a second, Luvander almost thought there was a scratch of uncertainty in Niall’s voice, like a ladder in a pair of stockings, but again, it was covered up and varnished over so fleetingly that he was sure he must have misheard. He was feeling drained and tired now, one last swathe of anger prickling and fizzing out in his guts like sparkling wine.

“Promise you’ll keep away from Holly.”

Niall’s eyes widened a little, then he laughed, low and sumptuous, and took his time tucking Luvander’s shirt back into his trousers.

“Well, if it matters so much to you, Luv,” he said, then licked his lips and winked. “I promise.”

Luvander suppressed a little shudder and wound out of Niall’s space.

“We’re not doing this in the showers or the beds when anyone else is in the room,” Luvander snapped, voice hard and taut like rubber. “If you try that again, I’ll kick you in the balls. Likewise if you tell any of the others. This is between you and me, alright?”

“Got it,” Niall chirped, now cheerful and amused again, rocking on the balls of his feet. Luvander wanted to punch or kiss him, or both, but he was doing so well, laying down terms for this little arrangement as Niall had called it, and he needed to make use of this unexpected rush of confidence and, preferably, make it to his own bed before he crashed and burned completely for the rest of the day.

“Meet me here again tomorrow after dinner,” Luvander instructed, “and I’ll make you forget you were ever interested in my Holly.”

Then he turned on his heel and walked out.

~

Monday brought colder weather, frost-bitten winds and the start of a full week of flying. The schedules were changing now that everyone had spent a day with their dragons. Mondays were Swift days, Tuesdays Fire-Breathers and Wednesdays Jacquelines and Crushers while whoever wasn’t flying continued with navigation and strategy classes and fitness training; Thursdays and Fridays reserved for combination flying, working out who worked well together in advance of any real raids. 

So this Monday saw Raphael, Luvander and Amery being transported into the city to the Airman building for training with Adamo and Jeannot, who didn’t fly a Swift but Al Atan was closer to one than any of the Crushers. “Heard a rumour that the Ke’Han are planning more attacks once the weather gets really bad,” Amery muttered, peering out of the carriage window for the first glimpse of the building they would all – eventually – be living in. Attacks in the deep of winter weren’t uncommon, Volstovic defences were traditionally lowered the same as most people’s wintry immune systems, the army depleted in energy at the worst end of the year. “’course they don’t feel the cold,” Amery added with a sideways grin at Raphael and Luvander, meaning the Ke’Han, “because they don’t have souls.”

“I guess that’s why they’re being so precise about our training, then,” Raphael worried at his gloves, “so we can hit them hard right when they’ll be expecting us to be most vulnerable.” He sounded slightly nauseous. “I mean, Ghislain told me he and the others had hardly any training at all – soon as the first girls were up and flying the Esar just wanted them out there attacking.” 

“Well, that’s what ended the last strikes,” Amery reminded them. “The Ke’Han were advancing and then suddenly – we had dragons, and they had to retreat. So whatever they’re planning they’ve probably tried to prepare for our girls – well, for five of them,” he grinned. “Surprise lucky thirteen should catch them out though. No nights off for maintenance when there’s this many of us.”

“Don’t sound so excited,” Raphael swallowed, his face paling like the moon between peaks of the Cobalts. 

“But it is exciting,” Amery wriggled around a bit in his seat. He wasn’t the most chronically unable to stay still among their number – that was Ace, with Merritt and his twitching a close second, and Niall wasn’t particularly statuesque either. However, when Amery did get excited, or enraged, he also got bouncy. And there was little which excited Amery more than his dragon Anastasia, and little which enraged him more than thinking about the Ke’Han. “Don’t you think, Luvander?”

“Huh?” Luvander peeled his cheek away from the window and his thoughts away from the equipment room. 

“Are you alright?” Raphael frowned at him, pitching forward for a moment as if he was going to reach out and touch, and then reeling himself back in like Luvander might bite. “You look a bit... pink.” 

“I’m fine,” Luvander sighed, letting the daydream – part built on the afternoon before; part fantastical paranoia about tonight – dissipate like dragon smoke on a misty morning. “Don’t fuss.” 

Raphael looked concerned all the way to the Airman while Amery continued to wax military about raids and dragon parts and how much he hated their enemies. Luvander tucked his chin into his scarf and closed his eyes, letting the gentle rhythm of the carriage lull him into the same false sense of security that Niall’s mouth had done. Meeting him tonight was probably the worst plan Luvander could ever have set in motion – but at least he’d (hopefully) be riding a high from spending the day with Yesfir being good at something. 

His hopes were, at least on that front, granted. 

Yesfir greeted him with a metallic, feline chirrup of gears and steel. It had been worse, Luvander realised in the moment they were reunited, being separated from her in the last week than it had been before. Everything inside him slid into its rightful place, comfortable and easy and neat, when he slipped into her pen and she winked at him. “Hello, my darling,” he found himself smiling for the first time since Ace had been making him laugh on Saturday night. 

“Still no uniforms,” Yesfir noted, running her glittering eye over Luvander’s warmest, darkest jacket and gloves. “I was looking forward to seeing how it looks on you.” 

“You’ll get your chance,” he grinned, and ran the flat of one gloved hand over her scales. “It’s reconnaissance training today, us and the other swifts. Are you ready?” 

“I’ve been ready all week,” Yesfir growled, flicking the tips of her wings in a manner which might have been restless irritation, or might have been preening. She shook her neck out with a click and a whirr, and Luvander fetched the harness even though he hadn’t been ordered to yet. Better to be prepared, after all. 

They spent most of the day up in the air.

Luvander was stiff all over when he finally slid sideways out of the saddle, unable to even distinguish between frostbite from the cold air and actual burns he’d got because his clothes weren’t as fireproof as they needed to be if he was going to ride a fire-breathing metal beast into battle. When he thought about the equipment room, all he felt was pain and more pain, not the sweet candyfloss anticipation or the quiet shuddering fear pulling apart his insides in sticky strands of molten sugar on the carriage ride that morning. He was craving a hot bath and a bed made out of clouds and feathers and every soft material in the world, and maybe a back rub, but that wasn’t going to happen any time soon, at least not until they got their fabled uniforms that allegedly got them all kinds of services free. For once in his life, he’d forfeit even a night of steamy hot sex for some creature comforts.

Yesfir laughed at him as he hobbled around her, a rag clutched awkwardly between his frozen fingers.

“You look wrecked,” she said, sounding pleased as punch about this fact, and a little bit naughty, like a smear of rust between two gears and a peek of lace beneath a demure skirt. “It’s a good look on you.”

“All your doing, babe,” Luvander crooned, but winced when he tripped over her tail. He’d just about regained his balance and his breath when Yesfir flicked it again, this time toward the entrance of her bay, where, he now saw, Raphael was fidgeting nervously, covered from head to toe in soot.

“Oh,” he said, as if he’d just happened to run into Luvander in an unexpected place. “Hello. I was just. Do you mind?”

Luvander shrugged, sending another painful spike through his neck muscles, and resumed polishing Yesfir while Raphael slid down into a stiff sort of crouch, leaning heavily on the wall, and let out a long breath.

“I am sore everywhere,” he moaned pitifully into the squeaking silence as Luvander rubbed furiously at a blackened patch on Yesfir’s flank. He wanted to say “surely not quite everywhere” and look pointedly - somewhere, but clamped his teeth down over the tip of his tongue and ignored Yesfir’s quiet ashy chuckle. “I feel like it just gets worse with time, don’t you? I thought we’d seen the worst of it when they made Ivory and me go out in that infernal hailstorm last time, but at least that was only a couple of hours, not a whole day.”

Luvander made a non-committal noise and moved on to a different sooty spot.

“Hey, um… you and Ivory, you’re um, really close friends, right?” Raphael said, his voice slanting upward in pitch toward the end, and Luvander’s stomach clenched in sinister foreboding of what could possibly be preceded by a question like that, especially after what Ivory had told him Sunday morning on the front steps.

“Huh,” he grunted, focusing intently on exactly how shiny he could make one individual silvery scale. “I - maybe - well,” he breathed out, wet his lips, and swallowed. Yesfir’s tail twitched, and Luvander was sure she was smiling, the traitor. “He’s not the sort of man you can really get close to, Ivory,” he said, carefully. There was a prickling tug in the back of his chest which made Luvander suddenly aware that secrets - whether his own or someone else’s - were, after all, really not his thing. The urge to tell Raphael everything Ivory had ever said was sudden and acute, like heartburn or heatstroke, scalding the tip of his tongue and fidgeting around in his throat. Luvander clamped his mouth shut, afraid that the words would do that thing they had such a horrible habit of doing, where they started saying themselves even while his brain was still telling them to stay put, stay down, shut up. He’d be a hopeless disaster if he was ever captured and interrogated for information, he realised, abruptly wondering again whether he ought to try and resign. Yesfir flicked her tail again, angrily this time, and he squashed that thought and rubbed more vigorously at the ash on her neck, thinking apologies loudly.

“Right,” Raphael said distractedly, tapping his fingers in a complicated pattern on his knee. “I just, he’s been… well. He always seems so angry with me? And I don’t know why? And the other night when he had his headache, he - um - said something odd and I guess I just…”

“That was probably just the headache,” Luvander said hastily, his hand slipping on Yesfir’s shining scales. “Makes him… say stuff. Apparently it’s a bit like being drunk.”

“Oh,” Raphael said quietly. He had his head bent, curls slipping forward to obscure his face, and Luvander faltered in his polishing for a moment, because Raphael sounded sad. He’d thought Raphael had been talking about what Ivory had told Luvander in confidence on Sunday, but if Ivory had asked Raphael to kiss him and Raphael hadn’t done it, why then would Raphael be disappointed about that? It didn’t make sense. Perhaps Ivory had realised what he’d said and got defensive, snapped at Raphael, who was always so distressed when people were angry at each other. The way Ivory had been avoiding Raphael lately probably hadn’t helped, either.

“Don’t worry about it,” Luvander told Raphael a little helplessly. Somehow, he wanted those two to be okay, because mood swings aside, when it came down to it, Raphael was good for Ivory. “Whatever he said, he probably didn’t mean it.”

“Right,” Raphael said again, looking pained. “Thanks. I should probably go and. Take a shower. Yeah. Bye, Luvander.”

Luvander saluted him idly and watched him go, relaxing at last when his steps had faded away up the staircase. So he’d passed the first test - all those things he’d wanted to tell Raphael about Ivory had stayed on the tip of his tongue, and maybe, if he was lucky, he’d managed to defuse the tension between them a little bit.

“Ivory… Is he Cassiopeia’s? What’s with those two?” Yesfir asked innocently then, and Luvander crumpled in a small heap by her flank and let out a long breath.

“I’m really not supposed to talk about it,” he said, then proceeded to tell her everything in a great big rush of verbal diarrhoea until Yesfir had to remind him that he still needed to take a shower before the carriages left.

“You know,” she said when he was just about to leave her pen, “there’s been bets going on among the girls… I reckon I’ve got a right head-start now that you’ve supplied me with all this delicious gossip. I won’t share, of course.”

Luvander grinned slowly and took a bow. He felt relieved now that he’d unburdened himself to someone; re-energised even, much more ready to face whatever lay in wait for him in the equipment room tonight.

“Any time, my love.”

~

The equipment room smelled like leather and bad ideas. Luvander almost didn’t go, circling three times in the unlit corridor outside, and flailing to himself before starting back towards the stairs, stopping on the second step and coming back to the door. He put his hand out to open it, changed his mind and retreated three steps; came back again and worried all the time about the way his knees hadn’t stopped shaking since he’d come down from the sky, and was there still soot in his hair. When he finally shook his head, took a breath like he was going to the gallows and opened the door, the room was dark and Luvander had a moment, his chest constricting with relief and horror, where he thought it was empty. He’d waited ten minutes after Niall had left dinner on purpose. 

And then there were two strong hands on his wrists pulling him through the doorway and slipping it shut behind him, the key scraping in the lock and Luvander had the door at his back and Niall pressed up against his front. He put his mouth next to Luvander’s ear and breathed in deep, exhaled on a cheerful, almost reverent “you smell like dragon,” and ran his hands up Luv’s arms to his shoulders. “Thought you weren’t coming,” he added, fingers splaying. 

Luvander couldn’t see Niall’s face properly without any lights, just a collection of shadows and the warmth of his skin. His hands were wide and serious against the faded cotton of the warm shirt Luvander had changed into after flying, his thumbs rubbing tiny circles through the fabric. A part of him wanted to retort with something smooth and lush, a casual well I couldn’t leave you hanging or a suggestive wanted you to work up an appetite while you waited. All he could manage, however, was a hushed “sorry,” wincing and limping into a pathetic “flying’s tiring,” and hating himself. 

“Aww,” Niall hummed against his cheek, his mouth hot and cheerful. Luvander’s breath hitched. “Need a massage?” he asked, the words silky and rich, invite and euphemism all at once. 

And yet: “yes, actually,” Luvander found himself whispering, because in all honesty there was nothing he wanted more. 

Niall manoeuvred him away from the door, tucking Luvander in against his chest and steering him over to the stack of exercise mats shoved up against the wall. He told him, in a voice like soft, worn leather, to lie down, and Luvander tugged off his shirt before he did so, just in case. Then there were Niall’s hands dancing over his back, feather-light at first, as if to map out the jut of his bones and the swell of his muscles in the darkness. Luvander pushed his face into his balled-up shirt and sighed as Niall’s thumbs dug carefully into the painful ridge of muscles running along the sides of his spine. It was easy to relax there in the dark room, with Niall’s hands slowly working him loose, neither of them saying a word. It was easy to match his breathing to Niall’s and not even tense up when Niall’s fingertips started to slip under the waistband of his trousers with every kneading circle, or when Niall leaned forward to place small, open-mouthed kisses along the tips of his vertebrae, slivers of melting ice pooling, at last, in the small of his back with the flicker of a tongue that sent desire shooting up through Luvander’s spine like a sapling.

Niall slowly peeled Luvander out of his remaining clothes, rubbing warmth into his bare skin with his hands. Luvander had all of five seconds to feel awkward about being completely naked while Niall was still more or less completely clothed and was just pushing himself up on his elbows to do something about this when Niall sneakily reached around him and gave his cock a few playful strokes while nibbling on the back of his neck and pressing one of his legs in between Luvander's until they gave in and spread a little on the mat.

Luvander swore under his breath, because that was less cindy than the noises he actually wanted to make. He was far too busy suppressing those and trying not to let Niall's hand affect him so much to notice that his legs were falling apart even wider of their own accord, with gentle encouragement from Niall's other hand, but when it trailed up his thigh to caress his balls and grab one of his arse cheeks, Luvander nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Woah, easy,” Niall whispered, lips still on his neck. “I'm not gonna lie, I'd really, really like to fuck you tonight, Luvander, but if that's not something you're into, I won't, promise.”

Luvander swallowed down a little burst of panic and pushed back against Niall, feeling triumphant when that elicited a little groan.

“Have you done that before?” he asked, keeping his voice carefully level and disinterested.

“Sure,” Niall said easily. His thumb brushed over the head of Luvander's cock and Luvander bit his lip hard, because it just wouldn't be fair for Niall to find out so soon about all the things Luvander especially liked. “With girls, mainly, but not exclusively. How about you?”

“Yeah,” Luvander heard himself saying, “couple of times.”

Niall drew in a deep breath behind him, then let go of his cock to shuffle backwards, holding on to Luv's thighs. His warm breath flickered over the small of his back like candlelight and Luvander shivered, wondering what he was doing.

“So do you want to?” Niall murmured, thumbs carefully spreading Luvander apart. Luvander was infinitely glad for the darkness of the equipment room right then.

“Sure,” Luvander said casually, digging his fingers into the mat. “If I get to fuck you next time.”

He felt Niall’s droplets of low laughter roll over his skin, and the back of his throat tasted sour even though he’d brushed his teeth after dinner, but then Niall said “deal” and moaned quietly, as if he was already looking forward to it, and Luvander’s knees buckled at the sound. He was caught utterly off-guard when Niall’s tongue painted a slick path down his cleft and circled his hole, gasping more out of surprise and the unfamiliarity of the sensation than out of pleasure this time, but it also wasn’t unpleasant, and then Niall took something out of his pocket, and when his fingers replaced his tongue, they were coated in some thick, slippery liquid, rubbing gently.

“Okay?” Niall asked, reaching around again to tease at the head of Luvander’s cock, and Luvander made a vague noise of assent. Niall pushed one finger into him, aided by the lubricant, and Luvander buried his face in the soft fabric of his shirt and held his breath, because it felt weird, not at all like he’d been led to believe from the few battered, illicit romans he’d got his hands on as a teenager by pretending he was a ‘Versity student researching deviant sexual behaviours. It didn’t hurt, though, and Niall used more lubricant before he added a second finger, stretching him patiently while still stroking his cock with his other hand. Luvander focused on that instead and started to relax, though his vague hopes that maybe he wasn’t such a big cindy after all if he didn’t experience any particular pleasure from this were quickly and suddenly dashed when Niall’s clever fingers found a better angle and a special spot inside him at the same time as his other hand sped up slightly, and Luvander made a helpless little sound, gripping his shirt hard with both hands.

“Ready?” Niall chuckled.

Luvander nodded, because making words would be more incriminating, and he didn’t trust his voice not to be strung out into a thin string of embarrassing neediness right now. Niall fussed around with more lubricant and whatever else he’d brought with him, and then nudged himself in between Luvander’s legs, running his hands firmly up the sides of Luvander’s thighs and curving them around his hips, pulling him up from the exercise mat arse-first. Luvander held his breath and bit into his balled up shirt with his fingers when Niall slowly pushed into him, his knuckles tense and white and his forehead pressed down tight between his hands. 

Niall sighed almost shakily out across the valley of skin between Luvander’s shoulder blades, and stilled. He braced himself and let go of Luvander’s hips, finding Luv’s hands with his own, balled up fierce and desperate in the bunch of pale cotton he’d been wearing to dinner. Gently, delicately, Niall prised the fists Luvander had made open, eased his fingers out of their scrunched, tenuous shapes and threaded his own fingers in between them, rubbing the side of one wrist soothingly with the pad of his thumb. “Alright?” he whispered right up close to Luv’s ear. His voice was heavy treacle, sticky and sultry and thick. 

“Mhm,” Luvander managed to mumble into the exercise mat. It still didn’t hurt but it was less comfortable than he’d imagined or been prepared for. Vaguely, he recognised that he was still hard in spite of this, and he blamed that on Niall’s warmth along his back, the illicit, thrilling, ridiculous fact that he was having sex in an equipment room, and the way that Niall’s lips were soft and sweet on the side of his neck and his fingers were soothing and confident between Luvander’s own, like they belonged there. He swallowed, trying to adjust to the feeling of Niall inside him, the stretch between his thighs and the way his muscles were dully burning in the background still, from flying. 

When Niall started moving again, Luvander was almost ready. Niall went slowly at first, moving his hips in snug, soothing shapes and running his hands along Luvander’s sides and around his front between his legs to rub the slick heel of his hand over Luvander’s cock, then switching abruptly back to teasing at the head with his fingertips, drawing his focus away and dispersing it with kisses along his spine, fluttery caresses and the occasional flick of his tongue against Luvander’s skin that felt like a firefly flitting through the dark. The more Luvander relaxed, the less invasive it felt to be taken like this, and a small thrill of pleasure guttered like an unsteady candle flame in his belly every time Niall got angle and speed and depth just right on a thrust.

This time, Niall came faster, which Luvander allowed himself to feel a tiny bit smug about, because it was shortly after he started pushing back against Niall’s hips. Luvander could tell because Niall’s perfect rhythm suddenly faltered, then sped up before stopping altogether, and he cursed under his breath, the sound dripping like molten gold along the strained curve of Luvander’s back. When he was done, Niall pulled out, humming low in his throat, slipped off the condom and threw it to the floor with a wet sound, then quickly flipped Luvander over on his back before Luvander had fully gathered his bearings and was swallowing down his cock with more finesse than anyone who’d just had an orgasm was in all fairness allowed to possess. Suspended in the nowhere land between neediness and overstimulation, Luvander arched up his hips and let his fingers dig into the back of Niall’s head, and when Niall didn’t protest, he bucked a little harder, fucking up into Niall’s mouth and coming on a strangled little whimper with his heels digging into the mat and his tongue between his teeth.

“Mm,” Niall said, wickedly, as he curled loosely onto the mat into the spaces left by Luvander’s body, “hand-to-hand combat training tomorrow, is it? I’ll make sure to pick the topmost mat.”

Luvander, lying in the dark, head reeling and the sweat just cooling on his skin, tried to catch his breath enough to reply with a weak “you’re disgusting”, but all he was able to wheeze out was a squeaky, panicky “oh, gods” instead, and Niall laughed, loud and bold and delighted.


	8. Lesson Eight: Uniform Misconduct

The uniforms arrived on Saturday.

They all piled into the common room, where space had been cleared by a handful of tailor’s assistants who were now flitting between them like colourful birds to make last-minute alterations as they tried them on. A few mirrors were lined up along the walls, but these were mostly occupied by Amery, Niall and Evariste preening and fussing about the exact fit of their jackets. Since Ivory wasn’t all that bothered about how he looked in the first place, he stayed in his corner with Luvander, standing still as a statue while the tailor’s assistant checked the length of his trousers and trying not to look over to where Raphael was squirming about unhappily in the determined grasp of two other assistants.

“Don’t we look smart?” Luvander sighed happily, running his fingers over his shiny cuff-links and marvelling at his new boots. They were soft leather, sturdy but pliable, and went up higher than Ivory was used to. The heels clicked musically on the floor when you walked. “I can’t wait to show Holly.”

At the other end of the room, where the Chief and the mentors, already in possession of their uniforms, were watching the proceedings with crossed arms, Magoughin peeled away from the wall and put two fingers in his mouth to whistle and catch everyone’s attention.

“Chief wants to make an announcement!”

Adamo stepped forward into the fresh silence.

“Lookin’ sharp, Dragon Corps,” he drawled, nodding towards Amery and Niall over by the mirrors, and some of the boys cheered. “If anyone wants any alterations made, you’ll have to let these gentlemen know by Monday at the latest…”

“Why’s that, Chief?” Amery shouted. “You going to show us off to th’Esar?”

“Or th’Esarina?” someone added hopefully. Laughter twittered around the room like coins in a glass jar until Adamo held up his hand, and silence fell again.

“Both of them, actually,” Adamo said, “you’ve all been invited to a royal ball next Saturday, so better tell your favourite girls you won’t be showing up and make sure your boots’re properly polished. There’s carriages to pick you up at eight sharp. This’ll be your first public appearance as Royal Dragon Corps, so I hope I don’t have to stress that anyone who’s caught _misconducting_ in any way is going to be on dog rations until we move to the Airman. Understood?”

The general response was made up of about one part hilarity and three parts obedience in the form of exaggerated saluting, clicking one’s heels together, and even a dramatic swooping bow on Niall’s part. Ivory was distracted with the buckles on his boots, which were refusing to close, but when he looked up again, Amery and Niall were waltzing through the room, narrowly avoiding sweeping Raphael into the nearest mirror, and something cold trickled down Ivory’s back.

“Luvander,” he hissed, shuffling closer. “A ball generally means you have to dance, right?”

“Hmm? Oh, yes, I suppose so,” Luvander said, following Niall’s and Amery’s progress around the room. Merritt was their next victim, but he wasn’t quick enough to step out of their way, and so the three of them collapsed on the floor in a tangle of shiny fabric and swinging epaulettes somewhere near the windows.

“What if,” Ivory said under his breath, picking his words carefully and polishing them like precious stones on his tongue before releasing them, “hypothetically speaking, some of us have never learned how to dance?”

Luvander tore his eyes away from where Niall was climbing to his feet and pulling his uniform back into shape, and turned his head to blink at Ivory.

“Well, someone would have to teach them, wouldn’t they?” he said, cocking his head to the side. “Someone who knows how to do it?”

“Do… do you know how to do it?” Ivory asked, increasingly desperate. Once again, their attention was drawn back to the other side of the room, where Niall was apparently doing an impression of Raphael after the last time he and Amery had stolen Raphael’s towel from the showers, shrieking “Don’t look at my body! It’s a _secret_!” and exaggeratedly covering himself with his hands. Ivory frowned as a brief memory of this morning flashed through his mind, when Raphael had still been asleep, starfished out on his bed with his pyjama pants riding so indecently low they exposed the prettiest happy trail and a mischievous whorl of soft, dark hair just peeking out above his waistband. Ivory had violently wanted to push his face into it and inhale - yet another thing to add to his ever-growing list of absolutely inappropriate urges he’d been having around Raphael lately - and had stomped out of the room a _little_ too loudly for six a.m. maybe.

“Of course I know how to do it,” Luvander preened, casually inspecting his cuff links. “Why, Ivory, do you need a teacher?”

~

“Who taught you anyway,” Ivory demanded sulkily, five hours later in the empty gymnasium, when they’d managed to shuck off the other boys (or, rather, when Ace and Evariste had got tired of joking around with Luvander and a game of darts. Ivory had reverted to his icy indifference all afternoon and been left blessedly alone).

“Hm? My sisters. We lived in the country, there was nothing to do,” Luvander shrugged, and then straightened up to his full height, offering his arm. “Oh, come on,” he sighed when Ivory remained staunchly against the wall with his arms folded. “If you want me to teach you, you have to let me touch you – don’t look like _that_ , honestly. You can’t dance with someone without some sort of physical contact though.”

Reluctantly, Ivory allowed himself to be led away from the wall. He kept his lips tightly together and his body taut, silently resentful as Luvander rearranged him, one hand lightly against his waist, the other supporting Luvander’s own palm. “Relax,” he said cheerfully – too cheerfully, the smug little shit, Ivory thought fiercely – “it’s only a waltz. Three beats--”

“I know what a bastion fucking waltz is,” Ivory hissed.

“Of course you do,” Luvander smirked, “all you’ve got to do is play it with your feet instead of your fingers. Easy as a Mollyedge whore. Here, follow my lead.”

“You said I was leading,” Ivory frowned, his back feeling too straight and his elbows stiff and awkward.

“Yes, yes, I’m playing the girl, though I doubt you’ll find a lady of the court with my good looks. Can’t lead til you know what you’re doing though, can you? And since you wouldn’t let me bring Ace along to help demonstrate...”

“I told you,” Ivory snarled, “anyone else hears about this and you won’t have toes left to dance with.”

“Mm, yes, very threatening,” Luvander grinned, “but you might want to let me keep them for now or you’ll have to ask someone else to teach you to dance, won’t you?”

“Why are you in such a good mood,” Ivory let his feet fidget in between Luvander’s and tried not to stumble as he hummed and stepped delicately, tugging Ivory’s in angles and shapes which felt entirely wrong. “You do realise we’ve got to be paraded and perform like monkeys in front of the fucking noblesse next week?”

“Mmmhm. There is nothing I love quite as much,” Luvander hummed, turning Ivory in a half circle which made him feel dizzy, “as partying with fancy folk. Now, _one_ two three, _one_ two three, come on, you know the beat.”

Ivory attempted to untangle his feet and rearrange them at the same time as still moving them, hyper-conscious of Luvander’s hand on his shoulder; the gentle, light pressure of their fingers together, poised like some sort of aerial prayer, a strange mix of elegance and ineptitude. There was something soothing about the simplicity of what Luvander was trying to teach him, but Ivory’s body didn’t want to agree or cooperate, his knees refused to untense; his feet objected to doing more than shuffling.

“How was flying this week?” Luvander asked him.

“What’s that got to do with anything,” Ivory ground out, clenching his teeth and trying to focus on the three beats Luvander was still faintly humming as he tried to wheel them in gentle, looping circles around the echoing, empty gymnasium.

“Oh, nothing, nothing,” he purred, “just trying to make you relax.”

“There is no part of anything to do with this which is relaxing,” Ivory told him sourly.

“Mmm, well you want to loosen up a bit because I’m going to spin you in a moment and if you’re really lucky I might just dip you when I reel you back in, so.”

Ivory’s legs took three steps back before his brain had even finished processing Luvander’s words, and Luvander burst out laughing while Ivory crossed and uncrossed his arms in front of his chest and ground his teeth.

“I’m sorry,” Luvander wheezed, “it’s just, your face…”

“This lesson is over,” Ivory hissed. The only place he wanted to be right now was wrapped up tight in Raphael’s arms, away from everyone and everything, which only made him even madder, because for one thing, this was entirely out of the question, and secondly, the mere thought was even less dignified than Ivory’s pathetic attempts at the waltz earlier. He was so thoroughly consumed by being hateful and grumpy that he nearly missed what Luvander said next.

“I slept with Niall.”

It was only a quiet, cotton wool statement, but the words rang in the silence like a handful of coins tossed on a table.

“I mean,” Luvander quickly tacked onto the end, his earlier amusement still shining wetly through the fresh coat of alarm on his face, but then didn’t follow it up with the rest of that sentence and simply stood there, arms dangling uselessly, looking a bit like he was about to cry, which was awful, because Ivory had no idea how to deal with that.

“Slept with as in…” Ivory tried to stall those tears by indulging him, but couldn’t actually bring himself to say the words. His hand made a feeble gesture in the air like a flag on a windless day. “That?”

“Mhm,” Luvander made, half smile half whimper. “That.”

“And… did you… like it?” Ivory forced himself to ask, because Luvander still looked on the brink of tears, and he couldn’t think of a reason for that other than _that_ hadn’t gone well.

“That’s the thing, you see,” Luvander sighed. “I did.”

~

Raphael was so fucking uncomfortable.

He hadn’t wanted to go out tonight, and most of all he hadn’t wanted to wear his uniform for it, because it pinched and squeezed and made him not only feel short of breath and vaguely nauseous, but also look like an utter idiot with over-large shoulders and clunky boots. Amery and Niall had once again ganged up on him, however, and Ghislain and Magoughin had made sure everyone went into the carriages - head or arse first, depending on how much they struggled - and didn’t crawl back out on the other side again before they stopped in front of the establishment in question.

To top it all off, Maisie, his favourite girl, was busy at the moment, and Raphael did not feel like experimenting tonight. He got himself a small glass of some rich, bubbly, gently alcoholic liquid and spent a few minutes trying to find a position on one of the chaise-longues that didn’t make his uniform go all taut across his chest and shoulders, but it wasn’t easy. He watched, moody and glum, as the other airmen made their rounds and preened and strutted, visibly enjoying the girls’ cries of delight and admiration, which Raphael was pretty sure were just pretend. Ghislain and the other mentors, also clad in their finest tonight, were standing along the walls, nodding approvingly as the younger ones showed off their new uniforms and started to pair up with the girls of their choice. Luvander already had his Holly hanging off his arm, while Niall was chatting amiably with one of his favourites, Bonnie, one of the few girls he’d actually taken to bed more than once so far. There were some, like Compagnon, Jeannot and Amery, who didn’t much care which girl they had the pleasure of spending the night with; some exhibited a certain type, and others, like Luvander, Ivory, and Raphael himself, stuck with one lady in particular.

Tonight, however, Raphael wasn’t the only one out of luck in this regard.

It was Ace, much to everyone’s surprise, who spun the red-haired Aria up the stairs and out of sight before Ivory had managed to shake loose Amery and Compagnon’s death-grips (ensuring that he wouldn’t try and run for it on the short walk from the carriages to the entrance). She cast an apologetic little look over her shoulder before she was gone, and Ivory looked, for a moment, quite like Cassiopeia when she was about to spew fire.

Despite the fact that they hadn’t been talking all week, Raphael hopefully made space on the sofa beside him and tried to catch Ivory’s eyes.

Unlike him, Ivory looked dazzling in his uniform, all lean and loping like a cat as he paced along the far wall between two curtained windows. The royal Airman blue suited his skin, the gold of his buttons and epaulettes dimming to a low brass beside the white gold of Ivory’s snowflake hair. Raphael could have written poems about the storm cloud that circled so threateningly beneath the delicate, frosty peaks of Ivory’s exterior, if he dared.

A girl with loose curls like honeysuckle stems and a lilac corset which left little to the imagination draped herself in the space Raphael had made, her arm stretching snakily towards his shoulders. He tried to shift them in the heavy, stiff wool of his jacket again, and made himself more uncomfortable, feeling seams and collar and the density of fabric all across his back. Raphael had grown up in a farming village, his parents were bakers. The uniform he’d been given when he joined the army had come off someone else’s larger, wider, well-marched back, and he’d been comfortable - used to freedom of movement in fabric not designed for the gossiping strictures of high Thremedonian society. He remembered, with a shiver like spring rain had just drizzled straight down inside his collar, that this time next week he’d be wearing this jacket and being paraded in front of the Esar himself.

“You’re looking anxious, soldier,” the girl next to him said in a voice like golden syrup. “Can I help?”

“No,” Raphael said reflexively, eyes still fixed on the prowling, thunder-faced figure at the other end of the room, before remembering his manners. “I’m sorry, I mean, no, not right now, I think I’m just going to… wait for Maisie to, um, finish. But thank you.”

“Pity,” the girl purred, letting her fingers walk idly up and down Raphael’s epaulettes. “Handsome man like you, all by himself on a night like this… I could keep you company until your girl gets back.”

She refilled his glass without asking, and Raphael sighed, resigned, and took a sip. The liquor tingled down his throat in teasing whorls, almost like fingertips fluttering over his collar. Raphael distractedly watched as Amery and Evariste crowded in around Ivory, grinning and talking in low voices, casting pointed looks at the stairs. Ivory leaned against the wall, one foot casually propped up against it, and slipped a small silver lighter out of his pocket to play with, flicking it on and off in a complex rhythm that Raphael didn’t understand. It was mesmerising. Then Ivory said something visibly scathing to Amery and Ev, who just laughed and continued to needle him, and the lighter in Ivory’s hand sparked to life again, fast and irritated now, a tiny blur of yellow, orange and blue in the lush red wine glow of the room.

“Excuse me,” Raphael told the lilac corset girl, who had been twirling her curls and humming under her breath, and stood up. “I need to talk to one of my, er, comrades.”

He didn’t know what he was doing. All Raphael knew was that Ivory looked like he was going to throttle someone in a moment, and Raphael didn’t think the chief would much approve if that someone was Amery or Evariste. Besides, what was that thing he’d growled about not misbehaving in their uniforms? “What’s going on,” he asked, still without a plan beyond interrupting before Ivory set fire to Amery’s precious hair, “you three are causing quite the speculation across the room you know, huddled over here together instead of, um, mingling. Amery, that vision in lilac was just whispering at me how much she likes the look of you in blue, why don’t you chat her up before someone else does?”

“The one on the couch?” Amery forgot about Ivory for a moment and frowned across the room. “Mm. What didn’t she like about you in blue, then? Too poetic, were you? Too disastrous?”

“I’m waiting for Maisie.”

“Have you gone all Luvander on us, Raph?” Amery looked astonished. “Wasn’t it you who used to say it would be nice to have tried a rainbow of girls with every different hair colour, back before we were Dragon Corps, pre-training? Wasn’t that you, what happened, what is it about the girls in this place that people get so attached to one, do they slip you some kind of potion?”

Raphael felt his cheeks colouring, the mottled confusion of pink and white which he was certain would clash horribly with his itchy, awkward uniform blue and gold. “I’m waiting for Maisie,” he said again, injecting as much cold lack of humour into his tone as he could manage. “Go and get your lilac fairy before someone else does.”

Amery raised an unimpressed eyebrow, but shrugged and kicked off the wall to fill the space on the sofa Raphael had just vacated with a fussy flick of his hair and a sultry smile. Evariste rolled his eyes, but his attention was half fixed on Merritt over by the staircase, who had apparently managed to attach himself to two girls at once, and he soon excused himself to relieve Merritt of the burden of one of them. This was lucky, as Raphael had had no plans at all on how to get rid of him - matching up Amery and the lilac girl had been a brief stroke of genius, not premeditated at all.

“Were they bothering you?” Raphael now asked Ivory under cover of having a closer look at his lighter. It was slim and delicate, with a barely visible pattern engraved into the metal that resembled dancing flames. Ivory’s thumb stroked over the grooves for a moment, then flicked at the little gear, and Raphael flinched back as it sparked hungrily.

“I’m going,” Ivory said flatly, slipping the lighter back into his pocket and pushing away from the wall.

“What? No,” Raphael protested, and didn’t notice that he’d grabbed at the cuff of Ivory’s sleeve until Ivory looked down at his hand, looked back up, and yanked it out of Raphael’s grip so violently that Raphael nearly fell over.

“Don’t go yet,” Raphael pleaded. “You never know, Aria might be done soon. We could wait together?”

Ivory still didn’t answer, but he also wasn’t walking towards the door anymore, and Raphael shuffled his feet.

“Please? I’d feel less awkward if I wasn’t the, um, only one.”

With a sigh, Ivory surveyed the room and the handful of airmen still draped over the furniture in various states of female company, and picked his lighter back out of his pocket with two long, spidery fingers that twitched, briefly, as Raphael took an ill-advised step closer towards him.

“You don’t talk to me,” Ivory growled, voice pitched low like a candle flame about to go out. “About anything. Not girls, not flying, not books. And for bastion’s sake, button that coat up the right way or I’ll set it on fire.”

But he stayed.

~

Holly had made a great show in the main reception room, of running her hands between the panels of Luvander’s jacket and over his sides like she’d missed him as he leaned in close to murmur a greeting into her hair. It had been nice, familiar; cosy, even - but it hadn’t been like Niall’s hands on his skin. He’d steered her upstairs barely before she’d had a chance to compliment his coat, and as soon as the bedroom door was shut he leaned back against it with a sigh and confessed: “Holly, I did the thing.”

“What thing, sweetie,” she cooed, her fingers trailing his sleeve cuff fondly.

“What do you think,” he groaned, dropping his head back against the woodwork with a soft thump. “Niall, of course. Or, rather, he did me, I suppose, which was… huh, well… I mean, he was here last week, wasn’t he, so I guess you know what that was, and. I. Shit. I’m such an idiot.”

Holly smirked and cupped his cheek with one velvety, gloved hand.

“Oh, poppet,” she crooned, stroking his cheekbone. “You are the biggest idiot I have ever had the misfortune to not sleep with, but not in the way you think.”

It was a relief to fall back into his routine with Holly. Luvander lay down on the bed, her head pillowed on his shoulder and his hand in her curls, staring forlornly at the ceiling as he told her his story, reassured her that he wasn’t angry with her for taking Niall on as a customer, since he knew that wasn’t really up to her, and allowed himself to relive once again his time in the storage room with Niall’s hands roaming his naked body in the dark. Holly giggled and cooed in all the right places, soothed her hands down his arms and, here and there, asked a cheeky question that Luvander always refused to answer before telling her anyway. At last, though, when he had run out of words and the exquisite agony of recounting that particular memory had faded back to a keening ache in the back of his throat, Luvander remembered, acutely, like a sting with a hot needle, what Ivory had told him that night he’d had the headache.

“Holly,” he said, sitting up slowly, “I don’t mean to pry, but are you, by any chance, you know, _involved_ with Aria?”

“Mmm,” Holly twisted the ends of her dark curls in her fingers like twine and pursed her lips around a coquettish smile. “Define _involved_ , sweetness. That’s a word that can cover a multitude of sins.”

“Are you - well,” Luvander shook his head, chewed his lip for a second and fought mentally for the right turn of phrase. ‘Girlfriends’ sounded too coy - and besides, he remembered his sisters using the phrase about girls they were especially close to without any hint of romance. Eventually he settled tentatively for “lovers?” because it couldn’t be misconstrued but didn’t have to be sordid and, he reflected with a maudlin hint, it’s what he would have liked to have been able to call himself and Niall.

Holly giggled. “How did you guess?” she asked, tossing her hair back over her shoulder now. “We try to be discreet, you know, it would bring us the wrong sort of business if we weren’t.”

“But you’re - but - aren’t you, how do you,” Luvander flustered, his hands making flightless shapes in front of him as he tried to find the words floating the air. “You know with the, customers and - doesn’t it, doesn’t it make you jealous as all hell?”

“You shut it out,” Holly shrugged. “It’s all you can do. Shut it out and remember that this is business, it’s pretend, you know? Nothing ever happens with a customer that’s real. _You_ know that better than most.”

“Do the other girls know?”

“Sure. It happens more often than you’d think in houses like this, you’d probably be surprised. Guess it’s only natural though - we spend all our nights serving ourselves up like feasts on silky platters for men who - no offence to the ones like you, darling, but - they’re mostly good-natured brutes, and a few bad-natured ones, sadly. Makes sense that more than a few of us would crave kindness from someone softer and gentler when we’re on our own terms.”

“I suppose,” Luvander frowned. “I just - I’m sorry, I - just wondered, I suppose. I’ve never really known any women who were. Who,” he paused, swallowed, and Holly’s bubble of a laugh burst on her cherry lips again.

“You’d better shape up and be a bit more man of the world if you’re going to make it as an airman, Airman,” she told him. “You’re learning fast though, and that jacket’s going to take you places you can learn even faster. You know there’s some houses up in Charlotte where you can go upstairs with a lady and she’ll fetch you a gent when the door’s safely shut, no one any the wiser? Expensive, mind, but looking as dashing as you do in that uniform they’d let you in on credit if it’s not payday.”

“I’m not - I don’t want - that isn’t,” Luvander flailed verbally again, and flopped back against the pillows, letting Holly rearrange herself alongside him and start her ritualistic messing of his hair, ducking in close to smear her lips along his neck and leave a crimson smudge like a battle stain.

“I know, sweetheart,” she murmured, “I’m just saying, it might do you some good to stop being so surprised by these things. Might give your fancy man something to think about too.”

“He’s not my fancy man,” Luvander muttered, unhappily. “There’s nothing fancy about having secret sex in a store room. I hope he was nice to you, by the way? I made him promise to leave you alone, but if he wasn’t decent last week I can still call him out.”

“Mm, yes, very manly,” Holly purred, tugging his shirt out of his trousers and loosening his belt buckle. “Take your jacket off, babe.”

“Seriously, I could take him.”

“I thought you already did,” Holly grinned cheekily.

“Holly,” Luvander whined, wriggling out of his jacket and handing it over. Holly tossed it unceremoniously on to the bed and then threw herself on top of it and rolled around.

“This stiff kind of wool won’t crease much, lucky for you and sadly for our charade,” she explained. “We’ll button it up wrong, though. Honestly,” she turned serious for a second, propping herself up on one elbow. The rolling around had also effectively rumpled her own hair and skirts. “It sounds like he handled you much the way he did me, barring the obvious difference in, um, anatomy, if you will. Then again,” she added with another of those impish grins, “that’s exactly what he told me he was going to do, show me what he’d do with you if he had you visiting him on Saturday nights. So at least I can verify he ain’t a liar.”

~

Ivory spent the rest of the week furiously avoiding Raphael. It was easy enough. He was used to building high, cold stone walls around himself and had long ago perfected the icy gaze of the disinterested and deadly. Back home, it had been the only way to avoid such social niceties as the elderly locals who seemed to believe that, merely by dint of having known who you were for all your years, you owed them as much time as they wanted to talk at you in the street. The local youth were even worse, and Ivory had wanted even less to do with them than he wanted to do with his co-pilots most of the time. Being alone was comfortable, it was quiet and it didn’t have a sense of humour which differed from Ivory’s and made him uncomfortable, and most of all, being alone was _safe_. Especially given this highly unwelcome gift from his brothers, by which Ivory meant his own awareness of exactly how attractive he found Raphael.

So, he stuck to himself, going to bed early and getting up earlier, running alone and eating breakfast before his comrades were coherent enough for more than coffee. He didn’t want to talk to Luvander, either, who in any case seemed preoccupied with whatever was going on between him and Niall now - a tiny part of Ivory was a tiny part intrigued, but not enough to ask for more details. Anyway, they were being taken up to the Airman for lessons in flying three days a week now, and he only had to fly with Raphael once. It was easy to ignore someone when you were straddling a dragon and shooting fire through the sky, alright. Ivory waited to shower until Raphael was done.

And then it was Saturday again, and - stiff and starched and already bored in his uniform - Ivory got into one of the carriages that would take them to the palace. A footman in green livery closed the door smartly behind him and the driver had the horses moving before Ivory had even looked up at the seat opposite and realised he was alone, for the duration of the ride, with Raphael.

Raphael smiled, as if he was _genuinely happy_ to see Ivory and share the carriage with him. It looked like a watery sunrise, rain still dripping down rooftops into the yolk of early morning after a night of thundercloud rage and howling winds, and it made Ivory feel weirdly self-conscious.

He took out his lighter.

“I’m excited to see the palace, aren’t you?” Raphael said into the clicking silence. The carriage went over an uneven patch in the road; Ivory braced himself, like he would on Cassiopeia, but Raphael’s head hit the roof with a painful _thump_. Ivory found himself flinching in unexpected sympathy and flung his gaze out the window instead, like a net, casting around for the gleam of something other than the man opposite him to direct his attention at. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Raphael’s head droop.

“I’m still not allowed to talk, am I,” he mumbled, resigned. It made Ivory’s heart scrunch up tight in his chest.

“If you must,” Ivory sighed and flicked his hand in a vague semi-circle, but kept his eyes on the window, not really registering any of the increasingly lush sights rumbling past in the gauzy lilac dusk. Over in the corner that Raphael was squeezed into, Raphael seemed to unfold like a crumpled napkin and start to glow. He looked nice in his uniform - he’d had some small alterations made and looked marginally more comfortable in it now, too - and Amery, in a surprising fit of friendliness, had helped him tame his hair earlier. The shiny dark curls loosely cradled his face like a lover’s fingertips, some of them tucked neatly behind his ears, looking like expensive, polished wood instead of the wild fairy garden it usually resembled. He was clean-shaven, his face scrubbed and smooth and rosy in the dim glow of the street lamps, and Ivory was loathe to admit that he would probably be beleaguered by fawning girls all night, whether he tripped on his feet or not.

“I hope there’s going to be food,” Raphael finally said into the silence. Ivory raised an eyebrow, because if that was the fruit of a couple minutes of furiously choosing his words after he’d been permitted to speak again, it was quite the pathetic attempt at involving him in a conversation. Raphael seemed to notice this, too, as he coloured a little and fretted at his cuffs. “I just mean. I don’t really know how this… ball thing works. And I’m not very good at dancing, so…”

“Me neither,” Ivory surprised himself saying. The street lamps outside had given way to smaller lanterns snaking along the sides of the path, dotting the shrubbery with friendly pink and golden light like a sunset. Gravel crunched underneath the wheels of the carriage.

“Oh, good,” Raphael said, relieved, “I mean, no, that came out wrong, I just, I’m glad I’m not the only one, I mean I saw Evariste practising with Merritt this morning - Merritt kept stepping on his feet, though, I don’t think they kept at it for very long, so - but Amery and Niall are really, really good, and they say Ghislain is, is a marvel to behold, considering, well… gods, I’m talking gibberish, no wonder you told me not to open my mouth.”

“We’re here,” Ivory pointed out as the carriage came to a halt. An attendant held the door open for them, and Ivory watched as Raphael stumbled outside, quietly keeping an eye on him to make sure he didn’t fall. The gravel was dusted powdery white, it wouldn’t do to greet the Esar in a chalk-covered uniform, and the others were sure to be nasty about it; Ivory wanted to avoid this tonight, for one thing because it would make them all look bad, and for another, because Raphael looked genuinely happy about getting to attend a royal ball.

All around them, airmen were descending from the carriages, joking and chatting, their voices rising in a steamy cloud above their heads in the cold air. The palace was low and golden, a series of rising suns surmounting the jewelled horizon of the city. Ivory looked up at the swollen orbs of dome-topped towers and swallowed, slowly. There was no way, he realised with the sinking stone of pessimism deep in his stomach, that this night could possibly end well.

He barely registered the regimented attendants in royal uniform who lined the main walkway, interspersed between paper white lanterns atop golden posts. Ivory kept his eyes on the ground, because if he didn’t look up at the palace, there were a few more minutes where he didn’t have to remember how overwhelmingly opulent everything was about to become. He fell into step beside Luvander, who was managing to maintain a chuckling conversation about palace women with Evariste which Ivory would have found hilarious at any other time and promptly ruined Luvander’s surprisingly convincing act.

At the top of the steps, the great golden mouth of the palace entrance, flanked with royal guards, opened up and swallowed them whole. There was a moment of awed silence. The grand entrance hall was an extravagant velvet cavern of reds and golds, with the shimmering metallic blue of the Airman uniform threaded through with a fine needle: a tapestry of the richest, most expensive primary colour. Ivory’s head hurt.

“Bit fancier than our quarters, eh,” Magoughin stepped up on Ivory’s right and nudged him with an elbow. “Reckon we should petition for a bit more gilt edging and fancy carpets, don’t you?”

To Ivory’s intense relief, there was no presentation parade or ordeal of being announced like debutantes. The ball was, apparently, in their honour, but not a showcase for the Esar to flaunt them like puppets. Beyond filing into the ballroom in an orderly fashion behind their Chief Sergeant, they were free to mingle, dance, drink champagne and flirt with fancy ladies as they saw fit.

What Ivory saw fit to do was find the least lavishly decorated bathroom for a quiet panic attack.

~

Luvander was having the time of his life.

Upon entering the ballroom, he’d immediately launched himself into the undulating masses of dancing couples, finding the nearest partnerless girl and offering his arm, and ever since then, he hadn’t set foot off the gleaming parquet, not even to sample a single bite of the lavishly decorated buffet at the other end of the room. He had, however, had a few glasses of Arlemagne champagne, graciously provided by the waiters dressed in white and subtle gold who offered refreshments to the dancers at the edge of the floor, and so, after his eighteenth dance of the night, Luvander was finally reeling in more ways than one. It was Niall who grabbed him and rescued him before he agreed to take yet another lady with silver-gilt eyes and perfumed cleavage for a spin. Niall, who had been dancing as well - so much more gracefully and naturally than you’d expect from a member of a soldier family, Luvander noted dimly - and who was now leading him over to one of the tables with two plates piled high with food and a hand on the small of Luvander’s back. Luvander whisked two more flutes of champagne off a passing waiter’s tray, plonked himself down on a golden chair, and giggled.

“Whew, what a night,” he exclaimed, clinking glasses with Niall and knocking back his champagne before digging into what looked like tiny puff pastries. They were filled with hot melted cheese, as Luvander discovered when he bit into the first one, and he moaned in delight. “This is delicious. Must be the fanciest food I’ve ever had in my life. Bastion fuck, get me twenty more of these, I beg you.”

Niall’s mouth curved up into a blade of a half-smirk as he leaned forward into Luvander’s space.

“A cheese puff is the fanciest food you’ve ever had? Babe, you’re in for a treat. Try the fish cakes next, go on. I’d rather you beg me for something else when the night is out.”

Luvander tried to swallow down a surge of undiluted arousal that went to his head like the alcohol he’d been consuming all night. He decided to ignore that last comment for now in favour of trying the fish cakes, and then the tiny mushroom quiches, after which the rest of the food became a blur of delicacies the likes of which he’d never even dreamed of, while Niall watched him eat and sipped his champagne with an altogether different sort of hunger in his eyes. When Luvander’s plate was empty and he’d let him have a few moments of thorough culinary appreciation, Niall took his elbow and suggested getting a little fresh air on one of the balconies, which Luvander hadn’t even noticed until then, since they were partitioned off from the main room with heavy velvet curtains only slightly held apart by thick golden ropes.

They stepped outside through the gap and immediately the noise of the ballroom was muffled to a vague background hum. Where the ballroom had been shining and resplendent in gold and white, the balconies were draped in soft, feathery darkness, with only the stars and the muted glow of the lanterns down below to navigate one’s way by.

“Oh,” Luvander said, once again overwhelmed by the luxury of the place and slowly sobering up a little in the cool night air, “I wish Holly could see this.”

Niall, who had been watching his star-crossed circuit of the balcony with something that looked, to Luvander’s intoxicated mind, almost like fondness, now leaned forward over the railing and frowned into the darkness beyond, one leg tapping out an impatient rhythm on the floor.

“Well, you’re seeing it now,” he said, sullenly, “so you can describe it to her next time you see her, right?”

“Right,” Luvander said, deflating a bit. There was no one else on the balcony apart from a young couple that seemed quite engaged in each other, so he took a step closer to Niall and placed his hand on Niall’s arm, then murmured, in a low voice: “You said something about begging earlier…”

He trailed off, catching his own tongue between his front teeth, and hoped that Niall would catch the hint.

“Mm,” Niall grunted, not looking.

“We could,” Luvander let his whisper thin out delicately, spinning into a wheedling temptation which he breathed into the sliver of space between his mouth and Niall’s ear. Champagne still thrummed in his blood, wicked and delicious. Luvander loved champagne nearly as much as he loved dancing. Everything about this night was dreamy, he thought, a whirl of precious delight in his head. A beautiful ballroom, fancy dancing, creamy champagne, adoring public, sensational food, a blanket of stars and the waterfall of city lights tumbling away into the night, and - Niall. In his uniform, which sat so well on his shoulders and curved over his waist and hips. “We cooooouuuld,” he repeated, stringing the vowels out like fairy lights, “find a bathroom or something? I mean, it’s not quite - it wouldn’t _exactly_ have the same seedy charm as the gym equipment storage cupboard but I think we could work with what we got, don’t you?”

Niall’s mouth trickled up into a smile which made Luvander want to lick him. More so than usual, even. He was still looking out over the balcony at the sea of city lights, inverse stars which glittered and mirrored the constellations up above. His profile, Luvander thought, could have been sculpted in soft relief against the velvet indigo and silver sky. “Why, Airman Luvander,” he murmured, pressing their shoulders together and still keeping his eyes out north, “was that a proposition?”

Luvander leaned in and put his mouth right up against Niall’s ear like he needed to share the gravest of secrets, and whispered “I want you to fuck me in uniform.” To his delight, Niall shivered.

“You’re awfully drunk,” he observed, his voice a carefully measured neutral. “And I’m not sure whether that might not count as, uh, an abuse of privilege.”

“What good is privilege,” Luvander softly asked the night sky, “if you can’t abuse it every now and then? Besides,” he added conversationally, “if you actually tell me you’ve never wanted to have sex in a royal bathroom I’m going to call you out as a fat liar.”

“Fair,” Niall nodded, and finally glanced at him, sideways with a smirk that made Luvander’s knees feel like he’d just downed three more flutes of champagne. “And, I suppose, there is a very large chance that one of us will do something in outrageously poor taste before the end of the night - you because you’re wasted, darling, and me because I never could behave nicely - and never get ourselves invited again. So it would be a shame to have lost the opportunity.”

“Now you’re talking,” Luvander nodded approvingly. “Which would you prefer: bathroom or broom closet?”

~

“Oh, thank fuck.”

It had taken Ivory the better part of an hour to find some privacy in a bastion-forsaken _palace_ , the largest building he’d ever been in, because every last nook and cranny of it was crammed full with ball gowns, sickly sweet perfume, delicate towers of confectionery, waiters with trays and bottles, sharp elbows, rude words, and trampling feet. At last, he’d managed to break free of a particularly stubborn knot of wanton, inebriated dancers and find refuge in one of the smaller bathrooms, sparkling clean in marble and gold, the lights thankfully dimmed. He’d caught glimpses of his fellow airmen here and there, immediately recognisable thanks to their new uniforms, the trend of which hadn’t yet been picked up by the Volstov elite. Most of them had been spinning breathless girls across the ballroom, the rest had been clustered around the buffet tables, some obviously engaging in some sort of contest about who could fit the most food into his mouth. Raphael had been immediately cornered by a waifish blond diplomat’s daughter and her giggling friends, and Ivory hadn’t seen him since. Not that he cared, right now; all he cared about was that he could finally lock himself in one of the blessedly quiet stalls, fold himself up into a tiny parcel of silent panic on the lid of the toilet, and play a long, soothing sonata in his mind.

The peace didn’t last very long.

He could ignore the occasional comings and goings of other guests and the puttering about of the attendants who made sure that the place stayed pristine and pleasant, but he still jumped when the door of the stall next to him was slammed shut rather rudely and a woman’s high, tittering laugh drifted through the partition. Ivory didn’t much care that she had chosen the gentlemen’s restroom, probably by mistake; but he did wish she could be a little quieter about it - until a voice mixed in with hers that he recognised better than any of his other fellow airmen’s by now, even, perhaps, Luvander’s.

“What, um, what are you -”

“Shh,” the woman said, “just lean back and enjoy, Airman.”

“Oh,” Raphael said quietly, and again, “oh,” this time with a slightly high-pitched edge to it, nearly drowned out by the sound of rustling fabrics and popping buttons. Ivory stiffened, inexplicably terrified of giving himself away. Surely, they weren’t going to…? In a palace bathroom? At a royal ball?

“Please, you don’t have to -” Raphael whispered, somewhat desperately, and the woman laughed again, but didn’t reply. Instead, there was a startled little moan, and something smacked hard against the partition between the stalls, like someone’s head dropping back without a care for the hard surface that was behind it. Ivory felt dizzy and faint, he could hear his own heartbeat in his ears, but he was frozen to the spot, his hands clutching convulsively at his trousers and tightening to white-knuckled despair every time Raphael made a whimpery, half-stifled noise in the stall next door and shifted against the partition.

It seemed to go on for far longer than necessary. Granted, Ivory had never been on the receiving end of a diplomat’s daughter’s mouth around his cock, and the thought of being so was the opposite of arousing so it would have taken an agonisingly long time for _him_ , that much was true. But Ivory wasn’t Raphael, who had an interest in ladies, especially slinky blond ones it seemed. Maybe, he thought with a bitter lack of charity, the diplomat’s daughter was lacking some of the finesse that Raphael was used to from his Saturday nights at the brothel. Then he dropped his forehead to his knees and tried to steady his breathing as Raphael made another one of those _noises_ , the ones which made Ivory’s stomach twist like a squall of itchy yarn, and he thought scathingly that surely there was only so much _skill_ involved in cock sucking anyway.

Ivory pressed his lips together and squeezed his eyes shut, willing his ears to miraculously close themselves. He thought loudly about simple, calm, entirely unarousing things like minor chords and winter sunlight, mud on his boots, the rituals of brewing tea and making a salad. Salads, he thought firmly, were plain and easy and comforting and had nothing at all to do with Raphael’s hands and the way one of them appeared to be scrabbling right now at the flat partition wall between their cubicles. Salad was green and friendly and didn’t make hot, gasping sounds in the back of its throat, or dogged little mewls of stammering, keening desire. The only thing wet about salad was tomato pips and dressing, and neither of those things had the obscene, damp, smacking quality of those noises Ivory could hear from that girl’s mouth.

It didn’t work, and even though he moved very slowly and carefully to cover his ears with his hands before Raphael came, Ivory still heard the way his breath hitched and staggered, rising and falling on the crest of a whine. He still heard the shifting of fabric and limbs and understood the way Raphael’s hips must have bucked, stilled, and gone slack afterwards. He still heard the low, fruity giggle on the diplomat’s daughter’s lips, and the way she leaned in to press a kiss to Raphael’s - undoubtedly flushed and probably sweat-shined - cheek, and murmured low and naughty: “don’t follow me out straight away” before the cubicle door clicked open and the breeze of her skirts rustled out again.

He could still hear Raphael catching his breath and trying to put himself back together again. Ivory wondered if he’d have any success at all without Amery to extend the same uncharacteristic niceties he had shown earlier. He had a vision of Raphael returning to the ball mussed and rumpled, creases in his shirt front and buttons misordered on his jacket; stiff collar askew and all the evidence of where he’d just been in the crooked weave of his curls. It made his toes curl in his boots.

Most distressing of all, Ivory noticed with a cold, abstract horror that drizzled down his spine like January sleet, he was definitely half-hard in his tight, starched Airman official trousers. Now if there was anything else quite like that for making a man feel pathetic, he noted sourly, he’d rather not know what it was.

There was a little more shuffled grunting and sighing from Raphael, clearly fretting about the mess he’d made of himself, Ivory raised an eyebrow to himself in what he realised too late was fond exasperation, and then he, too, disappeared. The bathroom plunged back into warm, pale, silence again. Ivory allowed himself the luxury of a small sigh, buried deep in the folds of his knees, and swallowed around the weight of now needing to wait until he felt less aurally sullied and was less obviously aroused before he could seek out a better place to hide. If there was anywhere in this bastion-forsaken building.

Unfortunately, just as he was trying to remember the smell of lettuce, the bathroom door clanged open again.


	9. Lesson Nine: Rules Of The Airman Handbook

The morning after the ball dawned slimy grey and unseemly, much like the facial expressions dotted around the dining hall at breakfast. The kitchen staff had kindly stuck to two options: plates of piping hot, greasy, gristly heaps of the most disgusting sausages, bacon and fried potatoes, or just plain toast, with or without a hint of salted butter. There was also coffee, darker and thicker than usual, and proper tea, with lemon and sugar for those who could stomach it. Luvander went for the toast, even though he was feeling mostly fine seeing as he’d stuck to champagne all night, but Niall cheerfully tucked into the sausages, as did Ghislain, Compagnon, Magoughin, Ace and Amery. Merritt and Evariste, Luvander noted, were both looking rather peaky over the rims of their coffee cups, and there was a dull flush creeping out from under Merritt’s freckles which got worse every time Evariste looked at him.

Luvander just about managed to drown his giggle in a large gulp of tea.

“This,” he told Niall under his breath, “is the best Sunday ever.”

He cast another look around the table, staring unabashedly as most of his companions were too busy nursing their hangovers and fingering their hickeys to take offence. Jeannot was the only one who winked at him, nibbling on a toast triangle smeared with blackberry jam, and Luvander grinned back. He was in good spirits today; he’d danced, had excellent food and got exquisitely laid in a royal bathroom last night, and was several paces ahead of everyone present in terms of hangover severity, with the exception of Ghislain, maybe; and to top it all off, he and Niall had stumbled on the most exciting secret in that bathroom last night…

_Niall had him pressed up against the partition, his hands on Luvander’s hips and his mouth on Luvander’s neck, and Luvander wrapped his legs tighter around Niall’s waist and fucked himself down on his cock with as much strength as he could summon in this position. Lubricant hadn’t been a problem - Niall had come prepared, the cheeky git - and the alcohol had taken the edge off the initial discomfort and pain for Luvander; just the fact that Niall was fucking him in the bathroom of th’Esar’s palace when they were the guests of honour was enough to drag Luvander dangerously close to orgasm in this moment. Niall sucked a purple trail up Luvander’s neck, then kissed along his jaw and took Luvander’s lower lip between his teeth. They were aware that there was a couple next door engaged in the very same - or at least, very similar - act as they were, or at least they’d heard some tell-tale noises and a muffled curse, and so Luvander did his best to keep quiet, though he was inordinately pleased when, every once and again, he was able to tease a short, breathy moan out of Niall._

_A door snapped open somewhere a couple of stalls away, and a pair of boots marched decisively out of the room. Niall squeezed one hand between their bodies and wrapped it around Luvander’s cock, and Luvander stifled a gasp in the back of his hand. Next door, a man groaned as the sounds picked up. Niall winked at Luvander, letting his hips slow down into an agonisingly steady trickle of circling thrusts, smearing an excess of lube down Luvander’s inner thigh._

“ _Fuck,” said someone whose voice, even through the partition and the haze of sex, was quite familiar, especially when it cursed. “Bastion fuck, Merritt, please.”_

_Evariste’s voice broke halfway through, splintering into a rough gasp; someone slammed their hand against the partition and whined._

_Niall had faltered in his rhythm and was staring at Luvander, both open-mouthed in gleeful surprise._

The door to the dining hall swung open, admitting the last of their group, who seemed neither hungover nor shame-faced, and even less interested in the food. Ivory’s hair was damp, which meant that he’d gone for a run this morning at vile o’clock and taken one of his cold showers after, and his eyes had dark smudges under them, but his hands didn’t shake as he poured himself tea with his customary aura of vague disgust bunched like heavy clouds around him. Luvander hadn’t seen him all night, and he felt a little guilty about not checking up on him, after their disaster of a dance lesson, but then, he’d been _busy_.

“Well, lads, now that everyone’s graced us with their presence,” Magoughin announced, heaving himself up from the table, “it’s time for… The Truth.”

There was an echoing thump as Amery dropped his head face first on to the table, narrowly missing the remains of his breakfast. Luvander was fairly sure his hair was trailing in some bacon grease which, knowing Amery, would be a cause for some wailing discontent later, when he realised.

“Nooo,” he moaned, “can’t that wait until later, pretty sure we’ve all got bad enough headaches without mocking laughter making them worse.”

“Nah,” Magoughin grinned, “might as well get all the hot flush of embarrassment over with while you’re already stinking of hangover sweat, Vallet, no point in showering twice, right? Let’s count heads, boys, exactly how many of you got laid on royal grounds last night?”

Luvander was momentarily torn between bold denial and smug confession, reasoning that there was no one (save Niall) to say that it wasn’t one of the stream of fancy ladies they had all observed him twirling around the dance floor who’d had him pressed up against the bathroom wall. He was also busy slyly watching Merritt and Evariste to see which, if either of them, was going to admit their sins first, whilst trying to catalogue the exact shades of pink Merritt’s face was marching through. He’d covered dog-rose and bitten strawberry, and was slowly turning up the heat to beetroot stain right now.

“Come on, Luv,” Niall interrupted his observation loudly, “I saw you disappearing with that shockingly attractive specimen after you’d attacked the buffet, don’t be fucking shy about it, as if the evidence isn’t painted all over your neck anyway. Luvander definitely got laid,” he announced to the room at large, “he’s trying to keep it secret in case one of us tells his special Saturday lady.”

There was a chorus of wolf-whistles and cat-calls, and Luvander pressed his lips together, fingered his toast and tried to force his own blush back down his neck inside his shirt front where it belonged. He could feel Ivory’s unimpressed splinter of a gaze on him all the way across the mess hall. He risked a glance at Niall, who winked, and then leaned back lazily, tilting his chair on two legs and clasping his hands behind his head. “I followed him actually,” he grinned and semi-falsely overshared, “grabbed one of my own and we had a little competition. I won.”

“How did you win?” Luvander exploded, outraged, and not entirely sure what Niall was doing.

Niall only laughed, and ruffled his hair.

“Alright, who else,” Magoughin was clearly bored of this story already, “except Ghislain, because he refuses to kiss and tell, the giant immovable bore. I hope everyone’s noticed how violently guilty Merritt looks right now, and Raphael’s cripplingly squirmy expression, both things which suggest they also got lucky on imperial territory. Come on lads,” he made a sweeping gesture with his arms and narrowly avoided knocking over an entire jug of orange juice. “Part of being Dragon Corps means _sharing_ \- unless you’re a man mountain, but that’s only because no one’s got the balls to fight you when you are. First rule of the Airman handbook: if you can’t be gracious enough to share your bed and what you bring to it with your comrades, you must at least be generous on the details - hey Ivory, where are you going?”

“Away,” Ivory said shortly, his voice like the whetted blade of a fresh-forged throwing knife. He picked up his mug of tea and scraped his chair back under the table behind him, with a screech of wood against the flagstones which had Amery whimpering and clutching his skull, and half the rest of the men wincing into the steam of their chosen caffeine cure.

Interestingly, Luvander noted, nobody moved to stop him.

“That’s either a guilty conscience or a real prude that just walked out,” Niall announced cheerfully, before switching to a tone Luvander hadn’t heard him use anywhere before, and which made his stomach do an unfortunate quickstep around his breakfast. “By the way,” Niall was saying, “if any of you festering bastards does say anything to my Luvvles’ girl about last night, I will personally see to it that you’re incapable of ever shagging anything again. Just so we’re all clear.”

There was a little reverent silence around the table while Niall glared at each and every one of them, one arm slung possessively along the back of Luvander’s chair. Luvander was still busy wondering just _how_ exactly Niall had won, other than the fact that he’d had his dick up Luvander’s arse and not the other way round, which was just plain unfair reasoning, and also ignoring that thing his stomach was doing, which felt like paper being folded up really, really tightly.

“Thank you, Niall, for that charming contribution,” Magoughin finally said, then held up a small slate board and grinned. “Right then, hands up everyone, no false modesty, you don’t have to share details if the lady in question was ugly.”

One by one, every single airman around the table save for Ace and Ghislain raised a hand, some, like Merritt and Evariste, reluctantly; some, like Amery and Compagnon, bleary-eyed but ultimately enthusiastic, and some, like Jeannot, smirking slyly to themselves. Magoughin wrote down the names on his board and counted, then sighed and flicked a coin at Ghislain’s head.

“Damn that poker-faced bastard Ivory,” he muttered, “I’d have won if he’d stayed to spill the beans.”

Ghislain made a show of pocketing the coins that were spilling into his lap from Compagnon and Jeannot’s hands; then tipped an invisible hat at the assembled airmen. “Much obliged, gentlemen. Keep up the good work.”

“You had bets going on that?” Amery asked weakly from where he was slumped against a very unhappy looking Raphael, his cheek comically squished on his shoulder. “Bastards.”

“Course we had,” Magoughin said amiably, “airman rule. Everything that goes on in this place is subject to sweepstakes, even the exact amount of bacon grease currently in your hair, Vallet, and just how loudly you’re going to scream when you realise.”

A half-penny made its way over into Jeannot’s beckoning hand as Amery’s wail of distress echoed around the room and everyone else winced and clutched their heads. Niall chuckled fondly, and Luvander spontaneously decided to go and find Ivory, because he had quite fulfilled his quota of behaving like a human being around Niall for the day instead of the lovesick, star-struck, perpetually aroused little cindy that he was, and besides, Ivory had seemed - upset.

~

“Is this your way of dealing with a hangover?”

Ivory sighed. He’d been so sure that no one would find him on the roof - or at least, that no one would be so invested in his absence that they would actually _follow_ him onto the roof - but Luvander could be a stubborn little bugger when he wanted to be, and even the threat of having his newest waistcoat get mauled on the rough tiles apparently wasn’t keeping him from climbing out of the small window that Ivory had propped open with one of his knives. Breathing heavily, Luvander folded himself down on the tiles next to Ivory and pulled his cardigan tighter around himself.

“Well,” he said bracingly, “nothing better than a blast of ice-cold wind to the face to dislodge those pesky wine fumes from your brain, I guess…”

“I’m not hungover,” Ivory muttered, leaning his chin on his knees and looking out across the training grounds stretching wet and frosty beneath them. He was wearing one of Maxwell’s old, knitted, fur-lined sweaters, which was far too big on him of course, and threadbare at the elbows; Sebastian had been threatening to sew patches on them for ages now, but Ivory didn’t mind. It was the first time he had taken it out of his suitcase, and it still smelled a bit like home: like pine trees and beeswax and hay. There was even a stray cat hair caught in the cable-knit pattern.

“What are you moping about, then?” Luvander asked bluntly. “And don’t say you’re not moping, because you clearly are.”

“Just needed some space.”

“Mm,” Luvander said, “I’d believe that if you hadn’t just stormed out of the mess hall looking like…”

He trailed off, then a dangerous look of revelation flitted across his face like a swarm of moths in the night. “Hang on… you didn’t… did you?”

“Did I what,” Ivory snapped, irritated beyond courtesy by the excitement in Luvander’s voice and the pointless beating around the bush.

“Why, engage in an ill-advised little palace tryst, of course,” Luvander said slyly.

“Of course I didn’t,” Ivory snorted derisively. “I’m not a flaming imbecile.”

“Thanks,” Luvander raised an eyebrow, but didn’t belabour the point. “Are you… I mean… well. Did you, were you maybe… wishing you had? Feeling left out?”

“If you don’t shut your fucking mouth,” Ivory said not quite under his breath and directed primarily at the bank of clouds which were draped like a dreary meteorological shawl on the spindly branches of the trees that bordered their fields. “I am going to throw you off this roof.”

“So not feeling left out, then,” Luvander said calmly, because he clearly had a death wish.

Ivory let a dangerous silence tread icy water between them, its footprints sharp and deadly, glass-edged seconds of carefully designed intimidation. Eventually, he said with precisely measured disdain: “ _trysting_ is not something I care to waste my time on. I’m quite happy to let the rest of you mongrels embarrass yourselves in your careless, public attempts at it. Now will you kindly fuck off my roof?”

“Okay, here’s a deal,” Luvander said. “I don’t really want to be on this roof, it’s fucking miserable up here, not to mention I’m freezing. You’ve been up here at least half an hour, you must be half icicle by now, which, now that I think about it, is probably why you’re being so fucking abrasive when I’m just trying to be nice. _Anyway_ , the deal is, I’m getting off your roof, but you’re coming with me, and we’re going to go into town for some hot chocolate to warm us both up again…”

Ivory snorted. “ _Or_ I could just throw you off this roof and be done with it.”

“I wasn’t finished,” Luvander clucked, holding up his index finger. “What I was _going_ to say before you so rudely interrupted with empty threats was, if you agree to do this teensy little thing for me, just some hot chocolate, that’s all - if you do that, I’m not going to make you talk to me about just how much you resent being the only one who _doesn’t care to waste his time on trysting_ , and I’m also not going to ask why you seem to be angry with Raphael _again_ when I know you two were having a civil conversation about flying techniques just this week.”

Ivory spent a full minute glaring at Luvander, but when this didn’t help, he relented. He _was_ fucking freezing, to be honest, and if a cup of hot chocolate was really all it took to get Luvander to shut up about trysting, well. Ivory would much rather shell out for a hot beverage than deal with all the annoying paperwork Adamo would undoubtedly throw at him if he _accidentally_ kicked one of his colleagues off the barrack roof.

“Fine,” he sighed, “whatever, fuck you.”

“Thought so,” Luvander grinned, and started to crawl back towards the window.

Ivory trailed him down the stairs to the corridor which had their dormitories and the showers ranged along both sides, the big window at the end of the passageway casting a milky shadow into the gloom. “I need to brush my hair,” Luvander explained, ducking into his room, “and I’d recommend a coat, if you aren’t completely numb from your love affair with being melodramatic.”

Ivory snarled at him wordlessly, but he was right, and he slipped into his own dorm opposite Luvander’s to find his non-uniform coat, as well as a scarf and gloves. Winter was definitely haring up the horizon, winning the race against the final wine dregs of autumn in her haste to suffocate Thremedon in her icy, dreary grasp for four months.

He hadn’t counted on his room bearing a full complement of roommates.

Amery was slumped on his bunk with his face in his pillow, his hair bedraggled and damp; moaning something about bacon fat and gods that hated him, and curses on both your houses if you don’t stop laughing at him. Ivory assumed that last was aimed at Niall and Raphael, who were perched like birds on the wire of the windowsill. “And where have you been, Captain Avoidance?” Niall folded his arms over his chest as Ivory opened the wardrobe door and rummaged through the clamour of fabric which belonged mostly to Amery, the fancy git.

“Out murdering,” Ivory said darkly, because the way Raphael chirped sadly and uncomfortably on reflex was both satisfying and unsettling, but he could focus on the satisfying part if he was prepared.

“And where are you going now?”

Ivory shrugged. “Post-slaughter celebration hot chocolate with Luvander. Why? Worried I might teach him something?”

Amery clutched convulsively at his pillow and groaned “don’t _doooonnn’t_ talk about _fooood_ you bastard” almost incoherently. Niall laughed.

“More like worried you two thought you could sneak out for hot chocolate without me,” he grinned, hopping gracefully off the windowsill. Abruptly, like a stab wound right up under his navel, Ivory hated him. “I don’t think so,” Niall sang, dancing his toes into his boots. “There are rules you know, and one in particular states that hot chocolate is my business.”

Ivory opened his mouth to politely request that Niall do everyone a favour and kindly drop off his dragon for a skull-cracking rendez-vous with a mountain some time, when Niall offered a hand to Raphael and asked if he was coming, too. Raphael flashed a nervous look at Ivory, who found himself pointedly looking away but not complaining, and so, when he exited the dorm a moment later to meet with Luvander, he had two unexpected though not unsurprising attachments. Niall immediately bounded over to Luvander and slung an arm around him, making up a little song about hot chocolate and whipped cream which Ivory was almost sure was supposed to be an unpleasant euphemism, and Luvander only just had time to throw Ivory a confused glance over his shoulder as Raphael fell into step beside him.

Ivory, of course, ignored him.

~

“...and then the General says, aye, but what about the beer? _What about the beer_ , get it? Because -”

Niall was wheezing with laughter at the third joke he’d told in a row. He still had his arm around Luvander’s shoulder, gloved hand biting gently into the hollow under his bone and rubbing leather-clad fingertips over the sliver of exposed skin beneath Luvander’s scarf. They had to stop a moment, because Niall was laughing too hard to walk properly, and Ivory and Raphael had fallen back a bit; Luvander casually glanced back along the path to check if anyone had been murdered yet, but Ivory was looking strangely serene as he walked beside Raphael, his shoulders hitched up and his hands in his pockets, probably playing with his lighter. They weren’t talking, which might have contributed something to the fact that Ivory hadn’t killed Raphael yet, but from where Luvander stood, it looked like a comfortable silence for once.

He wasn’t entirely wrong.

Raphael hadn’t said anything yet, beyond a meekly cautious “hello” which sounded like the trickle of a summer wave dancing onto the shore. Ivory had seen the sea, once, when he was quite small but old enough to remember. He’d nodded at Raphael, trying to be curt but suspecting he’d failed when Raphael continued to walk beside him without looking like he was afraid he might die. Raphael was wearing a big, woollen knitted jacket with wooden buttons, the fabric heavy and comfortable and homey, a deep wintry burgundy. His face and neck were wrapped up in a forest green scarf, pulled right across his nose so his hair tumbled out like exuberant hyacinth stems from a pot too simple to contain them. He looked cosy. He looked far, far more comfortable than he had done in his Airman uniform, never mind how that had clung across his shoulders, epaulettes sitting proud and glittering like trophies for emphasis, and made Ivory’s mouth go dry. Last night’s dolled up fancy Raphael had made Ivory hyper self-conscious and awkward of his own desire; this subdued Sunday morning version made him think about fresh tea and toasted crumpets, cardigans and winter cats, the steam from a hot bath and the bluster and hum of a kitchen which shut out the cold. Irritably, Ivory noticed, it made Raphael even more attractive. He fingered his lighter in his pocket and resented himself - but not, for once, his companion.

After all, he reminded himself miserably, it was hardly Raphael’s fault that Ivory wanted to take him apart in a way which had nothing at all to do with knives. It wasn’t his fault that Ivory had no idea or experience of what to do with that. And it wasn’t as if he could _help_ having shoulders.

“So, did you, er, enjoy the ball?” Raphael muttered as they were just crossing the border from Charlotte to Miranda. Ivory made a non-committal noise and hunched further into his coat. There was a lazy farmer’s market sprawled out like seashells and pebbles washed ashore on a small square that they had to cross, and Luvander called out to them, asking if they minded having a quick look around, because Niall wanted to get something for his mother at one of the artisan stalls. Raphael looked pleased about the idea, so Ivory shrugged and nodded, and they split up, agreeing to meet at the café on the other side of the square when they were done.

“There were a lot of… people,” Ivory felt the need to explain himself as he and Raphael ambled along a row of stalls selling winter vegetables. Raphael scrutinised a box of shiny red beets, then picked up an imported orange and smelled it, closing his eyes. Ivory’s stomach clenched. “The food was nice?” Ivory added somewhat desperately when Raphael still hadn’t said anything.

“I wish we had a kitchen,” Raphael hummed then, out of the blue, and put the orange back down with a somewhat wistful expression. “I miss cooking for myself.”

He gave Ivory a resigned little smile. A brief gust of sunlight hit his eyes, which Ivory had until then thought to be brown but which lit up in a gentle spectrum of forest greens in this moment, like stained glass, and Ivory had to swallow hard a few times before he could speak again.

“I miss green tea,” he whispered, immediately cursing himself inwardly for saying something so inane and stupid, but Raphael’s expression changed to excited at those words, and before Ivory could stop him, he’d grabbed hold of Ivory’s sleeve and was leading him over to a tiny stall draped in black silks and floaty blue tulle that bunched like clouds in the wind. The stall displayed a rather haphazard assortment of incense, small porcelain figurines, fiddly looking hanging plants and strange writing utensils that Ivory puzzled over for a moment while Raphael leaned across the table to shake hands with the vendor, a stooped old woman wearing a heavy shawl around her head.

“We’re looking for some green tea,” Raphael told her amiably, “Gunpowder, maybe, if you have it.”

The woman nodded slowly, then reached into a tall wooden chest with fingers covered in three pairs of gloves and wrist-warmers and drew out a dented metal tin that was painted in swirling red curlicues and flowers. She shook it a few times, put it on the counter and pried off the lid with some difficulty, and at once, Ivory’s nose filled with the soothing, smoky tang of proper, loose-leaf green tea, imported from Ke’Han by the looks of it and rolled up into small, shiny beads that hissed and rattled as the old woman filled some into a plain brown paper bag.

Ivory was so stunned at this discovery that he realised too late that Raphael was paying for the tea, but his stuttered complaints and offers to reimburse him after Raphael had forced the bag on him were cheerfully turned down and ignored. Feeling wrong-footed, but nonetheless clutching the tea protectively to his chest, Ivory followed Raphael through the market to another cluster of food stalls, not really seeing anything, though when the smell of freshly baked pasties curled around them like a friendly arm thrown over their shoulders, Ivory remembered that he hadn’t had lunch or breakfast today. As if on cue, his stomach growled loudly, and Raphael laughed.

“Hungry?”

Ivory nodded, but this time was fast enough to pay for both of their food before Raphael could pull his wallet out. He felt better after having repaid at least a part of the money Raphael had spent for his tea, and they sat in a small, watery patch of sunlight on a low stone bench under a tree to eat their pasties, which were filled with root vegetables and mushrooms in dark sauce, and delicious besides.

He was just beginning to allow a miniature contentment to curl like the edges of burnt paper at his mind, his stomach finally settling into a warm, comfortable shape instead of the knots and fidgets it had been twisting through all morning, when the reverie was completely shattered. “Oh dear me,” a lively, mirthful voice announced from over to his left, and all of a sudden the remains of Ivory’s pasty seemed smokingly unappetising. “I do hope I’m not interrupting anything… romantic?”

“Maxwell,” Ivory sighed out a gust of regret and trepidation over his own fingers. He could feel Raphael looking at him questioningly even while he closed his eyes against the oncoming barrage of inappropriate questions. “What are _you_ doing here?” he slipped one in himself, first.

“Oh, you know,” Maxwell said sharkily, “checking out the produce, having a nice little squeeze of all the veg, seeing if any of it’s still as juicy as the gossip about my baby brother and his important new friends. We’ve not been introduced,” he turned his avian sharp attention on Raphael, then, who made a tiny fragment of a noise only just loud enough for Ivory to catch in his fingertips before it slithered away out of earshot.

“Oh, yes, of course,” he stammered, and Ivory felt his heart clench in sympathy. It was bad enough for Raphael to be inarticulate, disastrous and chronically embarrassed around the other airmen, who would no doubt bully it out of him soon enough - which Ivory thought would be a monstrous shame and, perhaps, he should actually allow himself to find it adorable while it was still there to find at all. It was quite something else, though, to be bumbling and maladroit when faced with Maxwell, and Ivory wouldn’t wish that on anybody. “I’m, er, pleased to meet you,” Raphael was still fumbling, and Ivory decided he didn’t want to bear this.

“This is Raphael,” he told Maxwell with one cool arch of an eyebrow that said _fucking bite me_. “Raphael, this is my nosey brother, Maxwell, who is about to ask you all kinds of horrendous awkward questions because he’s a menace, and because apparently that’s what older brothers are for. Raphael’s an older brother too,” he told Max pointedly, “but he likes his siblings so I don’t think you two will have much in common. Luckily, we’ve got to go and meet our friends now, so we can’t possibly stay, lovely to see you, goodbye.”

He scooped a hand under Raphael’s elbow and led him back into the broken necklace of market stalls, leaving the last of his pasty on the bench and ignoring Raphael’s spluttering protest of buts and waits and it’s-okay-I-don’t-minds. He didn’t stop until they were nearly at the other side of the market altogether, down where the stalls were thinning out to weavers and stitchers, tables piled with home-spun and fleece dyed in patriotic reds and varying shades of the Volstovic countryside: rich, earthy brown, terracotta, paprika, smoky greens and persistent, undulating shades of raincloud grey. “I thought you got along with your brothers,” Raphael said sadly when Ivory finally slowed them both down. He was still clutching his precious cargo of tea against his chest.

“I do,” Ivory agreed, his voice low and confessional, still dragging around some belated frustration. “But they’re horrible teases and you get enough of that from Amery and Niall already.”

He still hadn’t let go of Raphael’s elbow. The fabric of his jacket was soothing, rough but familiar.

“Speaking of Niall,” Raphael said slowly, his voice the slow black treacle of reluctance, “I suppose we should, shouldn’t we, meet them, I mean? Before he causes some monstrous mischief and gets us all in trouble?”

“Huh,” Ivory grimaced. “It’s like you know him.”

“Did… did you just make a joke?” Raphael said, humour laced through his words like a slick of rum in tea, and a smile gathered in the corners of his mouth. His eyes twinkled, and he didn’t seem to mind that Ivory’s fingers were still caught in the burgundy fabric on his elbow. Ivory shrugged and looked away, hiding his mouth in his scarf.

“It happens,” he muttered. They’d come to a halt at the edge of the square, just a few paces away from the blue and red striped awnings of the café where they were supposed to meet Niall and Luvander. Raphael was still smiling. For a moment, they were back in the common room with the fire burning low and Raphael’s hands in Ivory’s hair, just looking at each other, and Ivory felt the contented warmth from earlier creep back into his limbs; it was so easy to be with Raphael, and he was _terrified_.

“We should go,” Ivory whispered, breaking their eye contact and letting go of Raphael’s elbow at last. His fingers twitched unhappily around empty air, so he stuck them into his pockets and gripped his lighter tight, the cool metal a comforting weight in his palm.

Raphael nodded, and together they stepped inside the damp, murmuring heat of the café to find a table and wait for their comrades.

~

The café was discreet, with silk screens partitioning off the tables into small booths and gauzy lace curtains streaming down the large front windows that made it hard to recognise anyone’s features if you happened to look inside as you passed. Luvander was grateful for it, even though they were all out of uniform and their faces weren’t yet so well-known that it might cause trouble; in fact, he was more worried about the fact that Niall was sitting so gods-damned close to him and kept leaning in to whisper outrageous secrets in his ear about the other patrons of the café, the waiting staff, their fellow airmen, whores in general and “their girls” in particular. He kept up a never-ending stream of gossip and conversation as they sipped their hot chocolates, warming their feet on the heat seeping from the fireplace next to their table and idly watching the business on the square outside through the faded lace.

“So, Raphael,” Niall said when he’d run out of public scandals to discuss, and Raphael immediately went pink around the nose. Between him and Luvander, Ivory stiffened, fingertips pressed flat against the soft clay belly of his mug. “Breakfast this morning was very illuminating, don’t you think?”

Niall then proceeded to lean away from Luvander and into Raphael’s space, lowering his voice in pretend confidentiality and putting a hand on his shoulder. Luvander didn’t miss the irritated glance Ivory flicked their way before frowning down at his mug again.

“Raphael. Raphael, Raphael, dear Raphael. We’re among friends. Why don’t you put us out of our misery at last and tell us your story of last night, hmm?”

“Um,” Raphael said uncomfortably, his fingers knotted almost painfully on the tabletop.

“Come, come,” Niall crooned, “don’t be shy, now. You’ve heard all about Luvander’s and my little adventure in the bathrooms, it’s only fair.”

“Oh, for bastion’s sake,” Ivory suddenly exploded, teeth bared and eyes like overnight frost, “leave him alone, he’s not your fucking _pet_.”

It was hard to tell whether Niall or Raphael looked more surprised at this outburst. Luvander bit his lip, something akin to hysteria bubbling up in his throat, and decided it was time to order some more hot chocolate at the counter, though he couldn’t resist smirking a little at Ivory on his way past. Ivory clenched his teeth and tucked his gaze neatly away beneath the table so no one could meet his eyes.

“Yes, hello, dear, could we have another round please? With extra cream?” Luvander leaned casually across the counter and winked at the waitress, whose cheeks promptly turned a pretty shade of rose pink. He had an inkling the extra cream might be free of charge today and gave her his most dazzling smile as she relayed the order to the kitchen staff and took his money, not even caring to count it. Luvander was about to turn around and head back to their table when he caught sight of the door swinging open to admit a pair of tall, blond, very handsome gentlemen, dressed in the simple clothes of the country but wearing quietly stylish green wool coats and matching scarves. One of them had the most well-tended beard Luvander had even seen. They stamped the wetness off their boots and looked around, and Luvander fussed with his waistcoat and cuff-links for a moment before sauntering past them with his hips cocked at a strategic angle, _just in case_.

He was _almost_ sure one of them gave him the once-over, and found himself smugly hoping Niall had somehow seen.

Back at their table, he cheerfully disrupted whatever furious verbal weapons Ivory and Niall had cocked, sliding the silver tray in among the unlit candles and the short glass vase holding sprays of the last of autumn’s leaves and berries and a sad, single, late Michaelmas daisy. “Drink up,” he suggested brightly, leaning forward over the table for a second or two longer than necessary to make sure that those newcomers had every chance to admire the view if they wished, “might as well brace ourselves for the cold march home later, hm? Anyway, I have heard that hot chocolate is a patent cure for bad tempers. Just saying.”

As he slipped back into his seat, Niall snatched at his mug and took a sip with a glare over the rim at Ivory that was as bitter as unsweetened cocoa. The chocolate left a skinny, glimmering kiss on his top lip which Luvander ached, suddenly, to be able to lean over and relieve him of with his tongue. It didn’t help when Niall licked it off himself, still glowering at Ivory. It helped even less when he said “thanks, Luv,” and Luvander felt his hand beneath the table alight abruptly on his own thigh and give it a healthy squeeze. He caught a short breath and folded his lips together so that his _you’re welcome_ came out as “mm” and he concentrated fiercely on keeping his alarm tightly coiled and controlled, staring at the sworl of pale cream on his own hot chocolate, because Niall was apparently not interested in moving that hand back again. The warm weight of it, a casual reminder of last night when it had been cupped around his thigh a little higher up and holding him up, made Luvander’s chest feel tight and he forgot about the handsome blond gentlemen again.

Until one of them appeared at the entrance to their booth, that was, resting one hand casually on his own hip and saying, laughingly, “well, well, this is a surprise - you know, Ivory, Max told me he’d seen you in the market with a friend and I just didn’t believe him… I simply couldn’t conceive of the idea that you might _not_ have invited us to tea with you?”

“Or that you had a friend,” the bearded man joined in, appearing at his brother’s elbow with his own tray of steaming hot chocolate. “And now apparently you’ve got three of them!”

“For fuck’s sake,” Ivory breathed out heavily through his nose and dropped his face into his hands, elbows bent on the table on either side of his mug. Raphael looked more traumatised than ever and Niall - his hand still on Luvander’s leg - looked like all his birthdays had come at once.

“I know you,” he said gleefully, “you were there the other week, weren’t you, that Sunday, you were in the common room, you’re Ivory’s brothers.”

“Sebastian,” the clean-shaven one gave a slight bow in Niall’s direction with a smile like a cat which had got both cream _and_ canary. “And this bearded savage is Maxwell. Might we join you?”

“I insist,” Niall grinned, shuffling closer to Luvander and tightening his grip as he did so. Luvander swallowed. The likeness between the brothers was obvious now - the same ghostly pale hair and unblemished skin, though Ivory was a shade closer to porcelain than either Sebastian or Maxwell. He and Sebastian had the same build, streamlined and feather-light with long, spidery fingers. Maxwell was broader (and, evidently, more hirsute) and his eyes were an icier blue, though somehow less piercingly evil than Ivory’s. Then again, Luvander remembered, Ivory had perfected his hostile ice queen façade, most likely the deathly glare of the cold-blooded killer was only part of that, not some inherited facial warning system.

Introductions were quickly made and hands shaken, everyone made space for the brothers to join them at their table, and among the scraping of chairs and the clatter of mugs and spoons being cleared away, Luvander nearly missed the tiny, inquiring noise Raphael made at Ivory, who just shook his head in response.

“Ahh,” Maxwell sighed as he lowered himself into the chair Sebastian had evidently just brought over from another table to sit in himself. Sebastian rolled his eyes and went to fetch another one while Maxwell unloaded their tray and took a large sip of hot chocolate, leaning back and crossing his legs at the ankle. “Good to be back in the city.”

“Shut up,” Ivory said tiredly from where his hands were still covering his face. Maxwell chuckled and put his mug down, then, inexplicably, winked at Luvander over the top of Sebastian’s head.

“He doesn’t mean it,” he said, fondly ruffling Ivory’s hair in a gesture so quick and precise it had to have been long practised and perfected, because Ivory’s hand came up almost equally fast to swat him away. If any of the airmen had attempted such blasphemy, Ivory’d be roasting them on a spit over the fire by now.

“Oh, I mean it,” Ivory growled. So far, he hadn’t touched his refilled mug, but now it seemed he was trying to empty it in record speed, presumably so they could leave.

Luvander was far too curious to let that happen.

“So, tell us about you,” he prompted, turning slightly towards Sebastian on his left and perching his elbow on Niall’s shoulder for a better drapery effect in the small cramped space of their booth. Ivory choked on his chocolate and coughed; both of his brothers ignored this, but Raphael had put a concerned hand on Ivory’s arm.

“Yes, do, please,” Niall joined in, dipping his little finger in whipped cream and sucking it off, releasing it with pursed lips and an obscene popping sound that had Luvander hastily rearranging his legs under the table. “We’re dying to know more about our _dear_ friend Ivory, he is so very shy and mysterious all the time.”

Ivory looked anything but shy and mysterious in that moment; all his feelings were written clearly upon his face, spelling cold-blooded murder and little else.

“ _Isn’t he just_ ,” Maxwell said with relish, ladling more cream into his mug.

“Just because he doesn’t feel the need to share every tiny thing he’s ever done with you and Amery doesn’t mean he’s shy,” Raphael protested earnestly, and the whole table minus Raphael himself and Ivory erupted in raucous laughter.

“What a precious little bodyguard you’ve got there, Ivy,” Maxwell teased.

“You must be very, ah, _fond_ of him,” Sebastian added slyly, and this time it was Luvander who choked on his hot chocolate, not just because Niall had started playing footsie with him under the table, but also because he had the sneaking suspicion that Ivory’s brothers knew more than Luvander would have given them credit for. Niall smirked, but didn’t stop sliding his toes up Luvander’s calf with a perfectly innocent air, and Luvander cleared his throat and tried his best to ignore this.

“That’s enough,” Ivory snapped, “just - talk about your bees or something, they’ll realise soon enough how boring you are and then we can get on with our bloody lives, for bastion’s sake.”

“Bees?” Raphael inquired, half fake half genuine interest, and Maxwell launched into a well-oiled speech about beekeeping and the different types of honey and their benefits, though Luvander noticed that Sebastian was still watching Ivory and Raphael with acute interest while his brother talked. Ivory was now sullenly slouched in his seat, one hand openly playing with his lighter, and Raphael switched between listening intently to Maxwell and sneaking tiny, worried looks at Ivory, who was looking rather flushed.

And then the hand Niall still had on his thigh groped firmly further up and Luvander lost his train of thought altogether, as well as his grip on his mug of chocolate, which clattered down on to the table - mercifully not falling over altogether, but splashing a fat swathe of hot liquid in an arc across the tablecloth and the back of his hand.

“Bastion _shit_ fuck, sorry,” he winced, snatching his hand away on impulse and stuffing it into his mouth. Niall looked at him innocently, eyes wide and the tip of his cream-slick little finger caught between his lips again, the utter bastard. “Sorry,” Luvander said again meekly, to Ivory’s handsome brother, “carry on.”

“Actually, we need to be going,” Ivory said curtly, shoving himself to his feet in a rare display of uncoordinated movement.

“We really don’t,” Niall argued, leaning back in his chair. He still had one foot taut against Luvander’s leg, hooked like a charm around the back of his ankle, and his fingers were kneading almost imperceptibly at the very top of his thigh. Luckily there was a large puddle of spilt cocoa for Luvander to be focused on mopping up which gave him an excuse for ignoring all this, or at least not having to let anybody see he was incapable of doing so. “It’s only half past two. We’ve got hours.”

“No, we haven’t,” Ivory snapped. “There’s a meeting at four about next week’s flying schedules, don’t you remember?”

“Hard to remember something that doesn’t exist.”

There was a moment during which Luvander glanced up and caught Raphael’s eyes, holding his gaze for a second, while they both let the cold horror of believing that Ivory was actually going to pull out a knife and aim it with stunning accuracy between Niall’s eyes - or at least challenge him to some sort of duel for calling him a liar – sink in. And then Ivory shrugged one shoulder, narrowed his face to a thin gimlet of not giving a single fuck, and said “suit yourself. Enjoy your dog rations when the Chief wants to know why you didn’t show up. Raphael?”

“Right,” Raphael half gasped, managing to look simultaneously uncomfortable and relieved. Luvander had no idea how any one man’s face could be such a rainbow of conflicting emotions. “Right, yes,” Raphael scrambled up and into his jacket, looking rather sadly for a moment at his cup, which was still half full, and then trailed Ivory out of the café into the bracing wind which had sprung up outside.

“Is there a meeting?” Niall asked Luvander, and pressed his foot a little tighter around his ankle.

“I’ve no idea,” Luvander muttered, still mopping at his hot chocolate disaster. “But you need to stop.”

“Killjoy,” Niall smirked, letting Maxwell and Sebastian think he was referring to his treatment of Ivory, while actually releasing Luvander’s thigh from his hand under the table. For a moment there, Luvander missed it.

“That Raphael,” said Sebastian pensively, then trailed off.

“He’s nice, don’t worry,” Luvander said hastily, because even though his sisters were all older than him, he knew what a brother might be concerned about in a situation such as this one. “We, ah, better get going, too, don’t want to be put on dog rations now do we, haha, our Chief is, well… Anyway, it was a pleasure meeting you, come on Niall, leave that poor whipped cream alone.”

Niall winked, licked another streak of cream off his index finger and got up with a little bow at Maxwell and Sebastian, both of whom were sporting that vaguely amused and slightly unimpressed look that Luvander had come to know so well from their younger brother.

“Airman Luvander,” Maxwell called after them, and Luvander couldn’t resist throwing a sultry glance back over his shoulder. Maxwell just grinned. “Will you tell Ivory that…”

“That we’re proud of him and to take care when he’s up there on his dragon?” Sebastian quickly interceded. Maxwell pouted, briefly, but then shrugged.

“Yes, that. And tell him he needs to get laid, the moody git.”


	10. Lesson Ten: Storms Don't Last Forever

“Are you okay?”

They’d been walking in silence for a while now and had reached the outskirts of Thremedon. The day had got colder and more dreary, or maybe it just felt like it after leaving the warmth and light of the café, and Ivory was feeling utterly drained and unwell after the exhaustion of last night, the cold and the long hours spent without food this morning, and the ordeal of having his brothers so near but being unable to either interact properly with them or at least stop them from spilling private things every time they opened their mouths. Ivory’s life was made up of tidy, separate compartments, having them violently mixed up like this, his brothers in this city talking to his colleagues, had been nearly unbearable. All he wanted right now was to take a nap - preferably on top of Raphael, who was still quietly concerned, but gave him space, for which Ivory was grateful.

“Just tired,” Ivory replied curtly and hunched into his coat. “And cold. I fucking hate winter.”

“Me too,” Raphael mewled, sidestepping a puddle. “We can take a nap when we get home, we were up really late last night.”

He didn’t ask about the meeting, which was how Ivory knew that Raphael knew he’d made that up. The idea of sleeping in the same room as Raphael, usually so distressing to Ivory, sounded merely comforting right now, and perhaps they were in luck and Amery had recuperated from his hangover by now and would be out. Or at least very soundly still sleeping it off.

The next time Raphael spoke, it was when they’d reached the barracks and were on the stairs up to the dorms already. His silence for the rest of the walk home had been of that strangely calm quality again, soothing and patient, and even though Ivory didn’t want to like it as much as he did, he was grateful to Raphael for providing it. “Are you getting another headache?” he said as they approached the door to their room. “Only, just - well, you looked a bit like - and - you just rubbed your eyes like they were hurting you, so. I wondered. I can go away, if you’d rather?”

“It’s fine,” Ivory said, flatly, and repeated “I’m just tired.”

If Ivory had believed in the gods, he’d have offered up a prayer when they stepped inside and found the dormitory blessedly empty. Amery’s bed was a ruckus of unmade sheets and dishevelled blankets, but he was not among them, and Niall, of course, was somewhere behind them on the long walk back from the market with Luvander. If they hadn’t stopped in the woods for an al fresco shag, Ivory thought with a vinegar twist in his gut that he recognised too late as envy. There was definitely heartbreak on that horizon, he reminded himself, as well as endless unpleasantries and tasteless drama their comrades would cook up. It was nothing to be courted or longed for.

And yet, the sight of Raphael tugging his own pillows out of their sad overnight lumps and twitching his blankets tidy, crouched over his bed with his broad, safe hands nursing the fabric into order, told him a very different story. Ivory was about to climb up the ladder to his own bed, but a fresh bout of wordless longing welled up in him, and he sighed and leaned his forehead against the wood for a moment, squeezing his eyes shut. There was some shuffling, and then Raphael put his hand very gently on his arm again.

“Sure it’s not one of those headaches?” Raphael asked, his voice for once deep and steady, though still soft around the edges, like peach fuzz and smudged ink.

“I… maybe,” Ivory said before he could stop himself, even though he was surprised himself at how headache-free he was considering all the flashy lights and noise he’d had to endure at the ball. Raphael made a low, crooning noise and slipped one hand into Ivory’s hair, fingertips pressing carefully against his temple, and Ivory sighed and leaned into the touch despite himself.

He wasn’t quite sure how he ended up in Raphael’s bed.

There were Raphael’s broad, gentle hands cradling his skull, a few quiet words that sizzled hot like ginger oil in the silence of the dorm, and then the clean, rumpled smell of Raphael’s sheets all around him, all cotton and warmth and cool relief. Ivory was too tired to worry properly about what their roommates would say when they inevitably came back. They didn’t start out really sharing Raphael’s bed, anyway; it was just Ivory at first, with Raphael perching on the edge on top of the blankets, massaging away a non-existent headache. It was when Ivory had already fallen halfway asleep that they somehow became more entangled, though whether that was Raphael’s fault or his, he couldn’t tell.

All he really noticed before he drifted off for good was that Raphael’s burgundy jumper really felt as cosy as it looked, and that his own hand had got stuck somewhere in the hem, resting on Raphael’s hipbone, his thumb rubbing tiny, indecipherable runes into a delightful sliver of exposed skin.

~

“You’d better not go in there.”

If there was anything Luvander was proud of today, it was how quickly he shut the door to Niall’s dorm behind him without even making a single sound that could have alerted the two people sleeping inside. They’d just got back from the city, wind gnawing at their cheeks and rain lashing at their coats towards the end, and while Luvander’s body was still thrumming with quiet desire, they had agreed to take a shower first, in separate stalls, and change into some dry clothes.

Now, though, he had to distract Niall, and fast.

“Oh, really,” one half of Niall’s mouth flickered the edge of a smirk into life. “And why not?”

“Mmm, looks messy,” Luvander pulled a face, “trust me. Also, I changed my mind.”

“Changed your mind?”

Sparing one brief half second to cast a glance over his shoulder and double check there really wasn’t anyone else in the corridor, Luvander made a grab for Niall’s wrist and reeled him in flush against his chest before he had a chance to protest. It was like dancing, again, only the stakes were a lot higher than stepping on anyone’s toes. He felt the same thrill burble in his stomach as he did when a quickstep started up. “I don’t want a shower,” he whispered, hot and heady against Niall’s chilled cheek, kissed pink by the wind. “Indulge me.”

“Mm, any time,” Niall’s lips curved into a smooth grin against the edge of his jaw, and Luvander remembered exactly how his mouth had felt there in the palace bathroom, remembered the gold rush of Niall’s teeth scraping against his neck and the crimson hulk of _want_ which had caught fire under his ribs when Niall had sucked on his lip. His stomach contracted into a fist and spaced out again, fast, leaving him breathless.

He kept his fingers tight around Niall’s wrist and tugged him back down the corridor towards the stairs, frantically trying to think of somewhere - anywhere - they could disappear to which was more exciting than the equipment room again. His dorm was no use. Luvander had no idea if it was empty, and even if it was there was no guarantee that one of the others wouldn’t walk in on them. He wasn’t going anywhere near the common room, and the mess hall, kitchens and the gym itself were ridiculous notions. Going back outside was foolish and freezing, which left only an empty classroom, the showers again, or - and here Luvander had to pause for a heartbeat and let his breath catch up with him at the sheer outrageous genius of the idea - the Chief’s office. Adamo was never at the barracks on a Sunday, which was why there was, of course, no four o’ clock meeting about next week’s flight schedules. The office door also didn’t have a lock, because nothing important or secret lived in there - he had a cabinet with complicated mechanical seals for confidential or personal paperwork, and anything pertaining to the dragons was kept up at the Airman building already. The command headquarters had been the first part of the building to be completed after the dragon pens. Adamo’s office at the barracks was little more than a desk and a fancy chair, and somewhere to chew people out when they’d fucked up.

When Luvander stumbled him to a halt outside the door, he palmed one hand slowly around the handle, cold metal against his sweating palm a last chance warning about what, exactly he was suggesting. He glanced at Niall, cocked his head towards the door and raised an eyebrow. Niall pressed his lips together against the aggressive rip tide of disbelieving, delighted laughter.

“Are you fucking serious,” he whispered, every syllable round and fat with glee.

“On the desk?” Luvander replied, his heart an arrythmical skitter behind the prison bars of his chest.

“On the desk,” Niall agreed, reaching behind him to turn the door handle.

Ivory, Luvander thought as they tumbled through into uncharted, forbidden no-man’s-land, fucking owed him.

Or perhaps it was the other way around.

Perhaps Luvander owed Ivory, for the way Niall peeled him out of his clothes almost reverently and bunched his own coat up under Luvander on the desk, laying him out so no sharp edges dug into anything important and then sweeping Luvander’s legs off the floor and placing his feet firmly on his own shoulders as he went down on him with a pleased little hum. Perhaps Luvander owed Ivory, for a view of the ceiling of Chief fucking Adamo’s office as Niall deep-throated him and pulled a bottle of lubricant out from somewhere in his coat, the cool glass slipping along the side of Luvander’s hip like a promise and a magic spell. Perhaps Luvander owed Ivory, for being turned over on his stomach and finger-fucked with his legs spread wide and his face inches from Adamo’s inkwell until he was close to sobbing, his hands gripping the edge of the desk so hard he’d be picking splinters out of them for weeks, while outside a small rain storm raged and the wind slammed against the walls of the building, making the lanterns sway and paint the room in undulating stripes of orange light.

Perhaps - _possibly_ \- Luvander owed Ivory for the best fuck of his life.

In any case, though, Luvander thought as he lay panting and in a crumpled heap in the spinning depths of Adamo’s leather desk chair, he was _never_ going to let Ivory know about this, or anyone else for that matter, because he’d just come all over Niall’s coat and Adamo’s desk without either of them even touching his cock, and while this felt like a momentous personal triumph to Luvander, it also felt like the kind of thing you damn well kept to yourself.

Especially since Niall was merrily tucking himself back into his trousers with another one of those happy little hums, looking smug as shit even without having come; without seeming to care for bothering. He propped his hip against the edge of the desk, trailing his finger through the smear of semen that curved across the woodwork, and smirked to himself. Luvander cradled his forehead with one hand. Last night’s recklessness had been fuelled by Arlemagne champagne, he’d already had a very stern monologue in the mirror this morning about not taking the blame for that. This afternoon, though… he had nothing to pin this one on but himself.

“You know,” Niall said thoughtfully, using his jacket to wipe down the desk, “this arrangement’s been good for you.”

Privately, Luvander agreed. It had been good - great, even - for his previously non-existent sex life, anyway.

“You’re bolder,” Niall told him, and then winked. “Looks good on you.” He picked Luvander’s shirt up from the floor and tossed it at him, then slipped out of the office with barely a glance to check that the coast was clear. Luvander’s shirt sat crumpled and belligerent in a ball on his stomach and, all of a sudden, he wanted desperately to cry.

~

When Ivory woke up, it was dark outside, the darkness of late afternoon in the thick of winter and the darkness of storm clouds having brewed in the samovar of the sky all day and finally boiling over the edge. He was disoriented for a moment, because what he saw wasn’t the crack in the ceiling above his bed but the underside of his mattress, and because he was curled up with another body that was radiating sleepy heat and scratchy woollen contentment. Then the world reaffirmed itself around him and Ivory was suddenly, acutely glad that the dormitory was still empty, and the beds on the other side looked just as they had before, down to the last crease in Amery’s pillow on the floor.

“Shit,” he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut for one more moment before setting about sliding out of Raphael’s loose grasp with the least possible amount of noise and movement. Slowly, he eased himself out of the bunk, set his feet on the floor and grabbed the bed post for support while dizziness still roared inside his head. He’d slept for too long, and he was half-hard and hungry again; the pasty and the chocolate having been all he’d eaten today. A loud noise in the corridor outside made him jump, and he hurriedly took a few more steps away from Raphael and tugged the blanket on his own bed out of shape, to make it look more like he’d actually slept in there rather than, well.

_On Raphael._

A low, trembling groan rose like a dust cloud from the nest of Raphael’s blankets behind him. Ivory held onto the nearest sturdy thing again, head still reeling, and took a deep breath, steeling himself.

“Mm,” Raphael mumbled, “‘vory? You okay? How’s your head?”

“Better,” Ivory said curtly, and then “thanks,” because he felt guilty about that already. This time, it really hadn’t been Raphael’s fault. He’d just wanted to help; Ivory was the one who’d pretended to have a headache just so he would do that _thing_ with his hands again, and he’d been the one who’d fallen asleep in Raphael’s bed without having been invited.

Just as Ivory was about to make his wobbly way over to the bathrooms for some much-needed cold water, the door swung open, admitting a somewhat dishevelled, but outrageously cheerful Niall, who was whistling to himself and squinting in the sudden darkness.

“Hot damn,” he said, “what’s all this about? Are we playing hide and seek in the dark?”

He lit one of the lamps, still whistling, and Ivory rubbed furiously at his eyes, feeling an ugly flush rise up from his neck even though there was really nothing that could tip Niall off about his… unusual sleeping spot from earlier anymore, especially considering that Niall seemed oddly distracted. He paced around the room, picked up a few random items, sat on his bed then jumped up again; rummaged around for some clothes and complained about Amery’s mess, then finally found his towel tucked away under his pillow and excused himself to the showers.

“See you at dinner, sleepyheads,” he sang, taking a bow before stepping back outside into the corridor. “Hope you’re less boring by then!”

He skipped away, cackling to himself, and Ivory released the breath he’d been holding and leaned back against the bed post.

“Why is he always so bloody cheerful,” Raphael moaned into his pillow.

“He’s fucking Luvander,” Ivory said without thinking, and the room span again in the horrifying nightmare realisation of what he’d just said. He knew better than to try talking when he felt like this, nothing good ever came of it. Next he’d be telling Raphael how dreamy his shoulders were, and then he’d be getting the shit kicked out of him by the other boys for being a cindy pervert, firey knife threats or no.

Except “huh,” was all Raphael grunted, the pillow bunched up under his mouth and hungrily subsuming his words. “Figures.”

“I didn’t, um,” Ivory clung to the bedpost and tried to backpedal and keep his balance all at once. “I didn’t tell you? I mean, huh, it’s not, I don’t know, they might not, I. Ugh,” he gave up, wilting back down on to the end of Raphael’s bed again like a long stemmed flower under the weight of its own petals in the rain. “Please keep that really quiet,” he begged, listlessly. “I don’t _think_ Luvander could skin me for sharing, but I’d rather not run the risk.”

“It’s fine,” Raphael flapped one hand vaguely in his direction, a circle of his wrist slickly, lazily painting how much he didn’t care. “Whatever, you know, they can. They’re. Whatever.” He heaved himself upright and rubbed both his hands across his face as if he was smoothing out the pillow creases, digging his fingers into the murderous storm cloud of his hair and shoving it back off his face. “Ugh,” he muttered, peering at Ivory in the dusk and drama of the pitchy rain-soaked late afternoon lighting. “Hey, are you really ok?”

“I… yeah,” Ivory said, folding up into himself and swallowing a few times until the nausea disappeared. “Not really feeling well, I suppose. It’ll pass. Sorry.”

The day was full of wonders, Ivory thought, half amused at himself; first he’d done something that might very well be described as _snuggling_ , or at least he was pretty sure Maxwell and Sebastian would call it that if they knew, and now here he was, apologising of his own free will. He blamed Raphael’s disastrous influence.

“Mhm,” Raphael hummed, sympathetic, and scooted around on the bed in tiny uncoordinated movements until he was sitting next to Ivory, their elbows and shoulders squeezed together. Ivory found he didn’t mind. “Can you not do that again, though? Apologise, I mean. Gives me the creeps.”

He grinned, half mischievous and half sheepish, and Ivory heard himself make a very unattractive snorting noise and self-consciously pressed his lips together.

“Maybe we should freshen up a bit before dinner,” Raphael said around a yawn. Then he tugged at a curl of hair that stuck haphazardly away from his head and frowned. “Not that anything’s going to improve _this_ , mind you.”

“I like it,” Ivory blurted out before biting down hard on his tongue in shameful horror. Had an overlong nap really disabled his brain-to-behaviour filters _that_ thoroughly?

“And now you’re being kind,” Raphael exclaimed, placing a hand over his heart and shaking his head in pretend disbelief. “What happened to the Ivory I l- know? Did a fairy come in while we were asleep and put a spell on you?”

“Fuck off,” Ivory grumbled, though without the usual venom. Raphael chuckled. He, too, seemed a lot more relaxed around Ivory in his dozy half-awake state than he usually was, and Ivory couldn’t help thinking how nice it was, despite the fact that he was making a bloody fool out of himself in front of the one person whose opinion actually mattered to him in this place.

“Come on, you must be hungry, too. It’s almost time for dinner and we don’t want to be missing the Airman Niall show, do we?”

~

**_interlude_ **

Holly stretched, feline and warm in the whiskers of Aria’s embrace. They never slept in any of the bedrooms which were used for customers. The girls had the top floor of the house to themselves, like the kitchen and washrooms down below. It meant having to traverse two flights of stairs and their work rooms between bed and bath, but it was worth it for the slivers of privacy. Holly and Aria shared a room with sloping, bowed ceilings and a small dormer window, just enough space on the sill for three fat candles and a wide handful of tatty books which was all Aria had brought from her life before. They never talked about before.

There was a mattress, squashy and worn down, piled high with blankets and pillows in muted, earthy colours faded from too many washes. None of the silks or velvets, none of the crimson, lace or taffeta made its way up here. The rooms they took their men to were as lavish and hedonistic as they could afford, sumptuous fabric, cushions and curtains in heavy brocade to hide whatever secrets they shared. In contrast, their own quarters were simple, homely, warm and comforting. Each and every one of the working girls preferred to shut the false grandiosity away when she had earned her keep.

“Tell me about your special airman,” Aria demanded, her long, slim fingers idle on the swell of Holly’s thigh.

“He’s not _my_ special airman,” Holly laughed, the very idea a plump, ripe cherry in her mouth.

“Oh, yes, he is,” Aria smirked. “You know what they’re saying about you two?”

“I’ve not heard,” Holly purred, “tell me what they’re saying about us.”

“I heard you’re in love with him,” Aria said lazily, then swooped in and nipped her teeth against Holly’s bare shoulder. “I heard you’re harbouring dreams about having him marry you and whisk you away from all this depravity.”

“Mm, wouldn’t that be nice,” Holly teased, “think of it, I’d be set up in grand style on an airman’s wages, surely - a house all my own, with servants to boss as I saw fit, and no other men between my legs every night. No men between my legs at all, actually,” she added, “I could take you with me as my bosom companion.”

“Charming,” Aria said dryly, and then sighed, dropping her head to Holly’s shoulder. One of the candles winked and spluttered with the backdrop of drizzly rain. “I expect they’ll be getting some pay sooner or later, and then they’ll be able to afford better than us. We won’t see them again once they’ve sampled the Fans, I shouldn’t think.”

“Depends,” Holly shrugged. “Going to the Fans isn’t discrete the way we are, outside of town. I don’t expect we’ll lose sight of all of them.”

“Now, now,” Aria chided, “that’s your marriage-dream talking again, my dear, don’t get carried away.”

“Oh, you’re right,” Holly feigned a desperate sigh and threw her head back against the simple cotton of their creamy cloud of pillows. “I am a tragic desperate romantic, after all! Whatever will become of me when he abandons me here with nothing but earrings and memories, to throw himself into the handsome promise of the arms of his fellow airman? Hold me, Aria, I can’t take it, I cannot bear the pain!”

“You should have been on the stage,” Aria told her against the gently perfumed skin of her neck, and Holly giggled, and let Aria kiss her, her fingers reflexively kneading at the back of the other woman’s shirt. The slope of Aria’s slim waist was warm beneath the cotton.

Holly sat up, slowly, and dragged her fingers through her hair. “I do worry about him, though,” she said, slowly. “I know we’re not supposed to care so long as they pay, but don’t you think it’s hard, when they’re paying to tell you their tragic cindy secrets, rather than paying you for sex? Don’t you think it’s difficult not to start caring, then? I do worry about him, Aria. He’s going to get himself in so much heartbroken trouble if he’s not careful.”

“That’s his problem,” Aria picked at her fingernail with her thumb and pulled a face. “Not yours.”

“Are you telling me you’ve never had this trouble?”

“I’m telling you it’s his trouble, and your job, and however much you care or you don’t, that isn’t going to change.”

~

Things got worse again.

Volstovic winter arrived with her undesirable pageantry of merciless, hostile winds and stinging rain. Several mornings saw sleet dancing off the roof of the barracks which made even Ivory grimace and resent their still-mandatory morning runs. They spent more days flying now, pitting their girls against the elements with twisting corkscrew accelerations designed to drill through strong currents of wind, and testing their new flight gear against the biting, relentless wet. The higher they flew, the worse the cold, and even Ghislain and Magoughin were spending longer in the steaming comfort of the showers after each practice. Ivory was grateful that Cassiopeia, being a Fire-Breather, had flanks warm as cinder blocks cradling the fire in her belly.

Evenings were spent dully exhausted in the common room. There were vague assurances sometimes that once the war heated up again enough to start sending them on raids, things wouldn’t be like this - they’d have more down time and less relentless endurance trials. Apparently the grand idea was to squeeze in as much practice and training in manoeuvres and strategy while the Ke’Han didn’t know they had more than five dragons, in order to launch a full-scale attack in perfect formation as soon as they started making serious threats again.

Lately, nobody had the energy left to do anything much by the time they’d crawled back to the barracks. There’d be a surge of enthusiastic banter after dinner, full bellies and the odd glass of wine reviving some of the boys enough for a short game of darts or a gentle tease, but the exuberance had gone even from Niall, Amery and Ace. It would have been nice, Ivory thought, a welcome reprieve, if it hadn’t also been depressing as balls.

Despite all this, Luvander and Niall seemed to spend more time together than ever. They were rarely seen apart in the common room, draped across each other with a bottle of something alcoholic between them, making snide remarks about the other airmen’s dart skills, swirling new gossip from town around in their mouths, lazily finishing each other’s sentences and reminiscing about girls (or, in Luvander’s case, a girl). Occasionally, Niall would give a little performance or lead everyone in a chorus of whatever inappropriate version of the Volstov national anthem was the most popular at the moment, and every night invariably ended with complaints about why the Airman building still wasn’t finished and, most times, a spitting argument between Merritt and Evariste.

Luvander seemed more at ease around Niall these days, which might or might not have had something to do with the fact that he was also limping worse than the other boys after flying. He bore the jokes calling Yesfir a brute with grace and cheer, and once or twice, Ivory caught him smirking at Niall across the room, who’d wink, cross his feet on the table and go back to whatever conversation he’d been having without so much as a single moment of awkwardness.

“Could they be any more obvious,” Ivory hissed at Raphael one night, when Niall was boisterously re-enacting the best pick-up line he’d ever used on a girl with Luvander standing in for the girl. Ivory and Raphael were sharing one of the smaller sofas, away from the epicentre of what was shaping up to be a rum-soaked, rowdy Friday night group of over-tired airmen clustered around the fireplace, Raphael curled carefully around his book and Ivory practising his letters on a spare piece of parchment. They’d picked their lessons back up, which Ivory blamed entirely on Raphael’s hopeful little face as he’d suggested it; though now that Ivory was a little less angry with Raphael for the sheer cheek of his existence, he found that he also struggled less with reading and writing.

“Ah, I see how it is,” Raphael hummed, not even looking up from his book. “You’re allergic to public displays of affection, that explains a lot.”

Ivory kicked him in the shin, but Raphael only laughed and tucked his feet tighter under himself.

“Seriously, they’re only going to get into trouble,” Ivory grumbled. With a sigh, he folded his parchment into the shape of a dragon, then, on a whim, stuck it into Raphael’s hair on his way past to the piano, and bit the shape of a giggle into his lower lip as Raphael made one of his waily noises and flailed at his curls.

“Ivoryyy!”

“Any requests?” Ivory asked blithely, perching on the piano stool and letting his fingers fan out over the cool keys. As far as he was concerned, they still had an arrangement wherein Raphael taught him to read and write and Ivory played whatever Raphael wanted him to on the piano, but Raphael hadn’t made much use of it so far, which irked Ivory more than he cared to admit.

“You pick,” Raphael said, as usual, and Ivory sighed but started to play anyway.

It was late when they went to bed. Ivory was in good spirits, because he'd been at the piano all night, and Raphael had found a kettle and two mugs to make the green tea in that they'd bought at the market. Ivory had, very generously, shared it with Raphael and Jeannot, and it'd felt nice, sitting around the dregs of the fire with them after the common room had mostly cleared out – if there was one thing Ivory appreciated about Jeannot, it was that he respected a comfortable silence and didn't ruin it with crude jokes or pointless comments.

He didn't have any trouble falling asleep, which was rare even after a week of exhausting flying, but when he woke up it was nowhere near morning. Outside, the wind had picked up, hissing and spitting and slamming up against the walls like a great big furious beast, raindrops bristling like fur along the bricks and window panes of the barracks. Ivory lay in the dark, quivering, hauntingly awake all of a sudden; blood pounding in his ears and fingers prying under his pillow for his knife before he could stop himself, never mind that you couldn't fight a storm with a simple blade.

Then there was the thunder, and Ivory was out of bed in a flash, grabbing whatever garment was flung over the nearest surface to pull on over his pyjamas and sliding out of the claustrophobic dorm room into the cool, dimly lit corridor outside.

He took a deep breath and pressed his wrists to his face, inhaling the smell of wool and smoked tea and fresh air that clung to the sleeves of Raphael's burgundy cardigan. Somehow, this realisation calmed him down, and he burrowed his nose deeper into the fabric and slumped against the wall, trembling.

“Ivory?”

For once, Ivory was too wired and distressed to waste time worrying about what Raphael might think, or the fact that he was always so alarmingly _present_ and _kind_. He bit his lips together, his entire body jangling like the clapper of a bell in the wind; muscles taut and vibrating. It was the exact opposite of the euphoric spike of adrenaline that came with flying, the breathless, jumpy energy which sang through his blood when Cassiopeia spiralled up into the sky, stormy or otherwise. Ivory felt it like cold sweat, tumbling fierce and sharp and persistent down his spine, pinching up into every organ in his body and making his veins hurt with their throbbing, desperate terror. It left him breathless.

The thunder rolled again, a great yawp of a sound that hunted around the building, the rumbling belly of a hungry, angry animal. Lightning flickered in the same moment, illuminating the chiaroscuro of Raphael’s face, etched with worry and the crinkled seed pods of sleep still clinging around his eyes. Ivory gulped out a sound like water dripping fatly from a leaky tap, and pitched himself against Raphael’s chest.

“Hey,” Raphael murmured into his hair, and his voice was the soughing of the budding trees in spring time, and Ivory wanted to wrap himself up in that until it drowned out all the rage and winter of the storm. “Hey, come on, you,” he breathed, and spread one broad, callused palm out flat between Ivory’s shoulder blades, an anchor of familiarity and firmness. “Storms don’t last forever. Let’s go down to the common room and make some tea ‘til this bastard’s over, okay?”

Ivory allowed himself one slow, shaky breath against the warmth of Raphael’s chest, before nodding. “Okay,” he agreed, under his breath, and Raphael’s palm slipped easily across his back like a caress, gently spinning him out so they were side by side, his arm resting resolutely around Ivory’s shoulders.

The kettle and mugs from earlier were still gathered on one of the low coffee tables, a cluster of worried children waiting for their next command. Raphael found a poker and prodded the still glowing embers in the fire place, tossing a little more wood into the grate. A warm, golden glow prickled like a dragon’s eyes through the ash, tentative tongues of flame licking up around Raphael’s newest offerings. Ivory sat close, fire so much less alarming to him than thunder, and pulled Raphael’s cardigan tight around his shoulders. He drew his legs up to his chest, wrapped his arms around them and put his chin on his knees, his fingers fraying at the burgundy cuffs. The smaller he could make himself, some nagging primal memory in Ivory’s brain insisted, the less damage that storm could do.

Raphael hummed softly as he brewed some fresh tea with what remained of the water in the kettle over the fire, not even starting or breaking his tune at each clap of thunder or streak of lightning. Ivory followed him with his eyes, Raphael’s gentle motions a comforting visual anchor. When he finally pressed a mug of steaming green tea into Ivory’s two hands, he sat cross-legged in front of him and folded his fingers carefully around the china, keeping his own hands cupped over the back of Ivory’s. Ivory didn’t remove them.

“Okay?” Raphael asked.

“Okay,” Ivory managed to nod.

Raphael still didn’t move his hands, and Ivory didn’t either. They were warm from handling the tea and stoking the fire. Broad, gracious hands with the rough calluses they all wore from handling the reins – never mind their gloves, spend enough time in the saddle the Chief Sergeant said, and you were bound to get sore somewhere.

The predatory wind scuttled at the windows, and Ivory shivered. Raphael pressed his palms closer.

“What is it that you hate?” he asked, quietly. Ivory felt his chest contract in a concave pleat of gratitude to him for not saying _what is it you’re afraid of_.

“I hate,” he said, swallowing around the shape of the words and collecting them carefully on the back of his tongue before handing them out, “I hate that I didn’t grow out of this.”

A tiny bird’s footprint of a frown perched between Raphael’s eyebrows. “Why should you?” he asked. “I never grew out of hating insects.”

“You hate insects?” Ivory was briefly, mercifully, distracted.

Raphael shrugged one shoulder, the worn fabric of his pyjama shirt rippling in the flickering light of the fire, which slicked dull golden stripes across the bridge of his nose as it danced. “Spiders make me feel the way you do about storms,” he said, a confessional laid out on the unembellished platter of his mouth.

“When I was little,” Ivory offered up in return, low and hollow, finding the words somewhere in the very depth of his throat, “my brothers told me it would get better when I got older, that the thunder wouldn’t sound so angry when I had things to be angry about too. But,” he stopped as lightning licked at the window pane, momentarily illuminating the ghostly spindle shapes of the trees outside. Raphael’s finger tips softly drew circles against the backs of Ivory’s wrists.

“But?” he prompted. The fire crackled cheerfully, swallowing another splinter in the transubstantiation of wood to flame and ash.

“There was one like this when I was ten,” Ivory sighed, because if he said it all in one breath he couldn’t stop himself halfway through. “That’s when my mother died.”

He closed his eyes, and waited for the empathetic grief and sympathy which came with realisation. He waited for the connecting cogs of what he’d said to rub and turn together for Raphael, the way their girls clicked and whirred into oiled, seamless motion. Ivory had never told anybody about his mother’s death – partly because the only people who needed to know about it, Sebastian and Maxwell, didn’t need telling, and partly because the only thing which made him angrier than being pitied was someone thinking they suddenly understood him. He braced himself for the cold wind of disappointment in Raphael when he inevitably apologised or tried to be kind, and told himself that this was a good thing, this was for the best. If he could go back to hating Raphael, life would be easier.

Except Raphael didn’t say anything at all, only made one of his sad baby bird noises, and inched closer. He took his warm hand away from the back of Ivory’s wrist and plucked the untouched mug of tea out from between his palms, setting it down beside them on the floor. Another burst of growling, ravenous thunder rattled the barracks, and Ivory drew himself tighter together.

“It helps, I think, if you can relax,” Raphael finally said, and turned their hands over so they were palm to palm. Ivory kept his eyes on the floor between them. “I mean, it helps you feel less... um... angry.”

“Is that our codeword for _afraid_ ,” Ivory bit out.

“I didn’t think you’d appreciate me calling it that,” Raphael replied, and it irked Ivory that he could hear the quirk of his mouth into a miniature smile in the tone of his voice.

“You thought right,” he grumbled, right before a vicious crack of lightning tore a fabric rip in the clouds, which made a noise like the inside of a steel drum. Ivory’s body responded before the rest of him could catch up, lurching him forward with a yelp.

“Woah, easy there, easy,” Raphael murmured in his soothing, dark brown, still water voice; right against Ivory’s ear. He realised too late that he’d catapulted himself right into Raphael’s lap, and was immediately, acutely, alarmingly aware of Raphael’s hands holding his arms, his own fingers knotted frantically in the front of Raphael’s pyjama shirt and – worst of all – his legs astride Raphael’s thighs like he was staking some kind of claim. “It’s okay,” Raphael was still whispering, a delicate flutter of sound against Ivory’s cheek, “it’s okay. Storms don’t last forever, it’ll wander off elsewhere soon. You’re okay.”

And then Ivory kissed him.

It was just a slight shift in position, all he did was turn his head the slightest bit to the left, and then his mouth caught on Raphael’s, and the late summer pollen swirl of desire licked up his insides and whispered _go on_. Raphael sighed, just a soft, shuddery, resigned little huff of breath, like a white flag signalling his surrender to the inevitable. Then one of his big hands wandered up to cup the back of Ivory’s head at the base of his skull, and he pressed their lips closer together and opened his mouth, coaxing Ivory’s along. Raphael kissed Ivory like he was trying to catch a snow flake on his tongue, and for all Ivory knew, maybe he was; Ivory knew what the other guys called him when he refused to come along to the brothel, after all. 

But then this was also how it felt to be kissed by Raphael: like a single snow flake, melting on the tip of somebody’s tongue.

~

The storm was what woke Luvander in the first place, but now that he was awake, he was also excruciatingly aware of how badly he needed to pee. He tossed and turned for a few more moments, trying to forget about the sensation again and return to the blissful oblivion of sleep, then finally heaved a big sigh and worked himself out from under the twisted covers with a stern glance at his nether regions for daring to interrupt his beauty sleep in such a very rude way.

The other boys, bless them, were sleeping like logs despite the ruckus of the storm outside, so Luvander had no trouble slipping out of the dorm unheard. By the time he’d made it to the bathroom and dealt with the business at hand (ha!), he was, however, wide awake; the noise of the wind and the thunder suddenly seemed a lot louder and less like he’d be able to ignore them if he went back to bed now. The prospect of maybe finding some milk and honey in the kitchen that he could warm up was enticing, and not just because it meant he could scout out possible new locations to seduce Niall in at some point soon.

He took the stairs, quietly because he was never entirely sure whether they were strictly _supposed_ to wander the barracks at night, and there was nothing more frightening than running into Chief Adamo in the darkness with mischief on your mind. When he saw the eyelash flicker of firelight writhing on the floor outside the common room, Luvander instinctively slowed to an even quieter, slower patter on the tips of his toes - his gossip senses were tingling, and even if it was just Amery secretly reading one of Raphael’s books, Luvander might still get a good laugh out of it if he managed to surprise him. As he approached the common room, the rain momentarily faded to a dim, sullen hiss, and in the toothy gap between two claps of thunder, Luvander heard a minuscule noise.

It sounded like the love child of a whimper and a moan, caught up in a net and strung out to dry. He frowned, because noises like that meant one of two things in Luvander’s experience – sadness or sex. He had no idea why the fickle human mouth produced such similar chords for such polar sensations but, and his recent experience had racked up the evidence, the noises a person’s vocal parts twisted themselves into whilst fucking were surprisingly often on a par with sobbing.

As ever, his curiosity got the better of him – because it could be someone being sad, in which case he should help, and if it wasn’t then he needed to _know_ now he’d _heard_ – and Luvander very carefully angled his head marginally around the door to the common room, slow and silent so as not to alarm whatever was making that sound.

Sex he’d mentally prepared himself for – though between whom, he hadn’t allowed himself to imagine, since he knew Merritt and Ev were still asleep. He had not prepared himself for the sight of Ivory sitting in Raphael’s lap, kissing him with his hands in his hair.

Luvander held his breath in his throat and tiptoed backwards with all the care he could contain. A thousand dervish things whisked through his mind, a mental maelstrom of surprise, delight, concern, relief, and envy. Unanswered questions – why were they down here, had they even gone to bed? Were they _going_ to go to bed? Did Ivory have one of his headaches again, did he ask Raphael to kiss him, was he going to regret it? – danced attendance on his immediate reactionary bubble of glee at catching someone out so deliciously, threatening to burst it. Luvander wanted to tell Niall, to chalk this one up on the score card they’d joked about keeping after overhearing Evariste at the ball with Merritt. Niall was convinced that Ghislain and Magoughin were “having earthquake inducing giant sex” too, never mind Luvander’s insistence that his so-called evidence was flimsy at best and fantastical at worst.

He forgot about milk and honey and headed for the stairs. A draught whipped up around his ankles and chased him to move a bit faster, his bare feet suddenly frozen on the tiles, a bite between his toes berating him for not putting socks on. Luvander caught his lip between his teeth, ran his tongue along it and wondered what, exactly, either Raphael or Ivory had done to produce that little sob of sound from the other. In all the times he’d had sex with Niall, he realised, they’d only kissed as part of something else: the tugging, furious, possessive sort that was all teeth and bruising. They had never sat and kissed each other properly, without an agenda. None of their hook ups had ever started out with kissing.

The cold flicker of jealousy doused any midnight hunger pangs that had drawn him to the kitchen in the first place, and by the time Luvander slipped back between his sheets, the thunder still boiling like overcooked soup outside, he’d almost forgotten the rest of his runaway train of reactions. It was only as he remembered – caught blind-sided by the memory which made him physically gasp, with his entire body – the way Matthew had kissed him in the rain and then behaved as if it had never happened the next day, that he started worrying again. Ivory liked Raphael, that much would have been obvious even if he hadn’t told Luvander about what he’d said that night he was feeling so unwell. Raphael, though – whilst kind and soft-hearted and innocent-eyed and apparently interested in being Ivory’s friend – had a favourite at the whorehouse, and Luvander didn’t think he was paying her for the same reasons he paid Holly.

Luvander didn’t think Raphael had any especial attachment to Maisie beyond preferring her company to that of the other girls on offer. However, he also didn’t think Ivory was the sort of person who liked sharing things – trying to get him to share one simple feeling was exhausting, and he looked like a fresh plate of blue murder if anyone touched his knives. Luvander didn’t want to know what would happen if anyone ever got their hands on his silver lighter. In short: if Raphael was looking for the same sort of arrangement that Niall had proposed to Luvander, Ivory was not a sensible candidate. The skein of excitement over being able to whisper this over-ripe cherry of gossip straight into Niall’s ear tomorrow, his mouth overflowing with crimson juice and delight, twisted itself up with the itchy yarn of anxiety over the potential for truly vile fallout.

The clicking needles of the mental patchwork they knitted kept Luvander awake until well after the storm had gathered its roar and retreated back up into the mountains.


	11. Lesson Eleven: Horns on the Moon

The next morning, Luvander woke early, his body wound up like a music box ready to spill the dissonant melodies of gossip, smug elation and gnawing worry that had been brewing in his head over night. He showered and got dressed in record speed and managed to be at the dining hall before even Niall had finished his morning routine. Luvander sagged in relief when he saw that the hall was empty, save for Ivory, who was sitting slouched over a tepid cup of tea with his hair in uncharacteristic disarray. As far as Luvander could see, there were no other tell-tale signs of last night’s common room surprise - no hickeys, no swollen lips, no torn-off buttons or happy twinkle in his eyes, but when Ivory turned to blink at him, there was something strangely mild and calm about him, the way he sometimes got when he was playing with his lighter.

“Morning,” Luvander chirped, settling into the chair next to Ivory. He was planning to start with tiny hints and slowly work himself up to the big reveal that he’d seen him and Raphael kissing, but then his mouth suddenly ran away with him like a horse rearing up in fright and he blurted out: “So, you and Raphael, are you, is this, do you have a kissing arrangement now or was that just, oh gods, what are you doing with that knife, exactly?”

Ivory had picked up a butter knife and was casually testing the blade against his thumb, but he didn’t look murderous, which, if anything, was even more unnerving.

“Good,” he said, and Luvander recoiled in terror, “I thought we might not be able to settle this so quickly, given your tendency to talk pretty nonsense for hours without coming to the actual point.”

Very delicately, he put the knife back down and took a sip of his tea, then grimaced in distaste.

“Bastion, I’d forgotten how fucking awful this stuff is.”

“So… so you’re not going to saw my head off with a butter knife?” Luvander squeaked. He’d been pretty sure that neither Raphael nor Ivory had seen or heard him look into the common room, seeing as they’d both been rather preoccupied _snogging_ each other, but then, Ivory did have super-human hearing, and if they’d stopped kissing just as Luvander had been walking down the corridor, maybe…

“I know you saw us,” Ivory said slowly, carefully, laying out the words as if picking over meat for gristle and bone fragments. “I also know that you’re quite keen on hanging on to all of your limbs and organs intact, so if you so much as mention that you were up at all last night to _anyone_ …”

“I get it, I get it! I wasn’t _going to_ tell anyone,” Luvander lied frantically. Ivory snorted and rolled his eyes, yet still relaxed a bit into his chair and looked a bit wistfully at the unsatisfactory dregs of his tea.

Suddenly, just like that, Luvander wasn’t afraid of him anymore.

“Soo,” he said slyly, “just to reiterate. I don’t talk to anyone about the fact that I caught you and Raphael…”

“ _Yes_ ,” Ivory ground out quickly.

“If I want to, you know. Keep my organs intact and all that. Right?”

“Right.”

Luvander leaned forward, smirking. “Those are the terms? I have your word?”

Ivory made a little grunting sound of wary agreement, which was enough for Luvander, who settled back in his chair and poured himself a generous cup of coffee with cream before continuing.

“The way I see it, this means I am still perfectly allowed to talk to _you_ about it, though. And what I want to know is: how on earth did that happen? Was that the first time? Is it going to happen again? Did anything _more_ than kissing happen last night? And most importantly, _how was it_?”

Ivory ran the one finger of the hand which wasn’t still toying with the butter knife around the edge of his teacup, and for half a moment Luvander thought he might almost be looking content, except that this was Ivory. “It was,” he said quietly, stopped, and Luvander pressed his lips together in excitement, until Ivory said “nothing to do with you.”

“Ivor _yyy_...”

“No,” Ivory shook his head. “You don’t need answers to any of those questions.”

“I can make up my own,” Luvander pouted.

“You do that,” Ivory said serenely, “since you can’t share them with anyone or ask anybody else, I don’t particularly care.”

With that, he slid the teacup away from himself across the table with a vague sneer and let the butter knife tumble from between his fingers. A tiny clatter sang out as it knocked back against the table and Ivory got up and left, just like that.

“Damn,” Luvander sighed at his coffee, blowing the steam off and taking a sip. Still, he reasoned, the stipulation was only about not talking to _other people_ about what he’d seen. Other people didn’t include dragons and Yesfir loved gossip as much as he did.

~

It wasn’t exactly that Ivory didn’t want to talk about it. He _didn’t_ want to talk about it, but his main reason for leaving the mess hall was that Luvander _trying_ to talk about it meant Ivory couldn’t pretend he wasn’t _thinking_ about it. Thinking about it was a dangerous territory even when he was alone. Thinking about it in company was completely off his agenda. At least if he thought about kissing Raphael when he was alone then it didn’t completely matter if he had a private panic attack.

They’d stayed in the common room for far longer than could be justified by the already flimsy excuse of storm fright and firelight and Raphael’s hands. Ivory hadn’t ever kissed anyone before Raphael, had never particularly wanted to; yet it had been so easy to do it then, so easy to keep doing it, easy to pretend he could just never stop kissing Raphael again and forget the rest of the world existed. Raphael had held on to him like he was something precious and wild at the same time, and Ivory shivered at the memory of Raphael’s big, warm hands cupped around his hipbones.

_Fuck_. He was thinking about it again.

In the end, Ivory sought refuge in the common room, which, despite being the very scene of what Ivory was trying so hard to ignore, also housed the piano. He played a few fast, angry melodies that were difficult to keep up with so his mind would be too preoccupied to replay details of last night on a loop, and when he finally stopped, with aching fingers and blissfully clear thoughts, he nearly jumped in fright as someone applauded idly from the doorway.

“I had to take lessons, as a child,” Amery drawled, blowing hair out of his face and playing with a button on his open waistcoat. “I was abysmal. My brother Balfour, he did alright. Nothing like that, of course, but…”

“What do you want,” Ivory said, keeping his voice carefully level so as not to reveal how unsettled he was that someone had managed to creep up on him like this.

“Oh,” Amery grinned and kicked away from the door frame, “Chief wants a word, some new training exercise they’ve concocted for us. Assembly’s in… now, actually.”

Well. At least that was something legitimate. Even with the nagging leftover creep of mortification at having been stupid and caught doing it, which slightly resurfaced to trickle icily down Ivory’s spine thanks to the general irritation provoked by Amery’s existence, Ivory couldn’t very well be tetchy about a summons from the Chief. He closed the lid of the piano reverently, smoothing the flat of his palms across the lid afterwards, dusting them off on his trousers and following Amery out of the common room, pointedly not looking at the now cold fireplace.

“Not going to lie,” Amery admitted conversationally, falling into step beside him in a way that Ivory instantly resented, “I had hoped this was going to be a _get together boys, we’re moving in to our real quarters tomorrow so pack up your troubles in your old kit bag_ , you know? Not that I don’t love sharing our room,” he grinned.

“Why are you talking to me,” Ivory ground out.

“Ah, yes, there it is,” Amery’s grin broadened, “your patent animosity to everyone who exists. It’s less frightening than you think, Knife Boy.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Ivory said calmly, fingering in his pocket for his lighter. In about three minutes they’d be in the gymnasium and Raphael would be there with his hair and his hands and his mouth, and Ivory would have to look at him. His heart stammered a protest against his ribcage. “I could fetch my knives, put one against your throat if you like, if you want something _threatening_. Don’t think I wouldn’t.”

“Niall says you’re all talk,” Amery shrugged.

Ivory had exactly zero regard for what Niall said.

“That’s rich, coming from him,” he replied in what he hoped was a casual manner. “Seeing as he is physically incapable of shutting his mouth for even a single second.”

Amery chuckled merrily and drew breath to, no doubt, say something extremely distasteful about Niall and open mouths, but by that time they were nearing the entrance door to the gymnasium, and Amery’s comment got lost in the general din of an airman assembly in progress. Ivory slipped silently into a seat next to Ghislain at the end of a row after some internal struggle over who might be the least aggravating person to sit with, and Ghislain gave him a little salute and said nothing, for which Ivory was extremely grateful. The last person to stumble in was, of course, Raphael, looking vaguely dishevelled with pillow creases on his face, and Ivory pointedly ignored the wistful look Raphael shot his way and slid down further in his seat with his arms crossed and his legs stretched out languidly in front of him.

Then Adamo roared for silence and everyone settled down, the tide of Adamo’s voice washing all the noise away save for a few stray hiccups of laughter here and there.

“Seeing as most of you good-for-nothing troublemakers have got sufficient control over their dragons by now to not take a nosedive into the Basquiat soon as you take off, I’ve decided to change things up a bit from now on,” Adamo announced, hands in his pockets and eyes fixed on Ace, who was miming what Ivory could only assume was a nose-dive into an imagined Basquiat. Ace caught himself mid-dive and slowly straightened up in his chair.

Once he was properly satisfied that everyone was paying enough attention, Adamo went on to describe a strategy exercise they were going to conduct on the Volstov side of the Cobalts in two days, wherein they would be split up in teams of four, with dragons matched for strengths, and pitted against each other. Excitement rose like whorls of steam from freshly brewed pots of tea, and Adamo had to employ his full vocal range twice to stamp out the small fires of low-level chatter erupting all over the gymnasium at these news.

“Teams will be announced after dinner. Each team will be assigned a secret mission. Whichever team finishes their mission first and comes back with all team members and dragons intact, wins. You have two days to prepare strategies. Sabotage of opposing team members is fair game, so long as no dragons are damaged in the process and no riders get maimed or killed. Dismissed.”

Ivory got up and caught Luvander’s eye across the crowd. Luvander grinned and mimed kissing someone passionately, and for a moment, Ivory resented the fact that all riders had to come back alive from this exercise.

~

“So I hear you’re on my team,” was actually rather a tame line for Niall, Luvander thought later that evening, gazing idly out of the window at the end of the third floor corridor. This was where the classrooms were, where they had their lessons in strategy, navigation and dragon mechanics; usually disrupted at least six times by a combination of Ace, Amery, Evariste and Niall himself - all of whom were frustratingly good at all three topics and had little care for those who weren’t as naturally apt. The window at the end of the corridor was just below Ivory’s roof perch, and had a wide, concrete sill and a view across the - now dark - training grounds. It was a stark, cold part of the barracks, no curtains at the glass and only a parade of military portraits lining the wall of the corridor opposite the classroom doors, but Luvander liked it. There was something cool and spacious about sitting on that broad sill and watching the trees over the last few months as they shed their summer coats and spindled into the beginnings of winter.

“Mm,” he said now, eyes fixed on the black depths of outdoors as Niall’s hands settled about his shoulders.

“We’re up against my roomies, Angry and the Poet,” he continued, breathy and soft against the side of Luvander’s neck, a tiny breeze of collected words that trembled down Luvander’s skin. He held his breath. “And the Weather Mountain, and Mr Unacceptable Sex Eyebrow himself,” Niall added, shaping his mouth into a flat, smooth kiss at the last.

“Nghn,” Luvander shivered before he could help himself.

“Mm, I quite agree,” Niall smirked against his skin. “Since sabotage is encouraged and I’m pretty sure Ghislain could snap both of us with one finger and not even notice, I feel like we should make the best of the time we’ve got, don’t you?”

“You mean,” Luvander would later be proud of himself for managing to make an entire sentence while Niall’s mouth did those things on his neck, his hands cupped warm and familiar now around Luvander’s shoulders, thumbs smoothing gentle, soothing circles. “Plan ahead? Think up, um. Think. Think of their weak spots, or… how we could… hm. I don’t - hmm,” he closed his eyes tights and swallowed as Niall licked against his quickening pulse. “Strategize?” he finished, weakly, voice tiptoeing upward with each syllable.

“Yeah,” Niall whispered, his breath skittering cool and hungry. Luvander tilted his head vaguely towards the window, eyes still closed: invitation and incitement all at once. “Or we could give it up as a lost cause now and go down to the fun room.”

“Equipment room,” Luvander corrected him half-heartedly. Again.

“I didn’t think you approved of the innuendo,” Niall’s mouth tugged itself upwards in the corners and Luvander felt that, and shivered again. “Aw, are you cold?” Niall hummed, and ran his hands down Luvander’s arms, squeezed his elbows once and snaked them underneath, coiling them around Luvander’s front and pressing them together. Luvander’s stomach swayed and danced like one of Ghislain’s turbulent seas, glad that no lights were on in the corridor so if anybody was outside, they weren’t framed in the painted glow of a lit window. He allowed himself exactly half a second to pretend that this wasn’t illicit or clandestine, and then stamped on the fantasy. Half seconds worked, they were okay, lately: half a second to make believe this was Niall being his boyfriend, and then close that down and back to the real game of hidden sex and courting Holly. Self-preservation at its finest. “Imagine if they sabotage you beyond recognition,” Niall continued to murmur, tucking his chin against Luvander’s collar bone. “That would be such a tragedy. I can’t let that happen. Let’s go downstairs.”

“Going downstairs isn’t going to help.”

“Mm, but it will make me feel better,” Niall insisted. “And you. I promise.”

He wasn’t wrong.

Not entirely, anyway. Luvander emerged from the equipment room feeling not unlike after flying practice, physically refreshed and soothed, warm all over despite the cold radiating off the concrete walls of the building, and was about to cheerfully suggest raiding the kitchens for some coffee and biscuits when he nearly walked smack into Compagnon, who reflexively grabbed his shoulders at the last moment to stop him. For a second, Luvander stared at him, horrified, then Compagnon let go with a tiny giggle and thumped him on the back hard before Luvander could step out of range.

“What on earth were you doing in the equipment room?” Magoughin asked, having come up beside Compagnon with a stack of parchment and some quills. “We were looking all over for you two. Gotta talk strategy, don’t we?”

“I, we,” Luvander stammered, the cooling sweat on his back now feeling like a film of ice.

“Nothing,” he said at the same time as Niall slid an arm around Luvander’s shoulders, put his chin into the cradle of his collarbone and announced “well, what do you _think_?” with a wink and a leer.

Luvander froze.

Magoughin and Compagnon exchanged a look that seemed incredibly significant, although Luvander couldn’t figure out in what way - he had his ideas, of course, and not a single one of them was even the slightest bit comforting at all.

“He’s joking,” Luvander bleated feebly, trying to pry Niall’s hands off him with unsteady fingers.

“Is he, though,” he heard Magoughin mutter. He looked like someone who had just had an epiphany. Compagnon giggled again, this time futilely pressing his hand to his mouth to stifle the sound, and Luvander finally succeeded in shrugging Niall off of his back.

“Haha, very funny,” he managed, “can we get on with the strategizing now? Does anyone know a place where we won’t be overheard?”

Magoughin raised an eyebrow, glanced at the door to the equipment room behind them, and made an exaggerated _after you_ gesture while Compagnon giggled and Niall chortled and Luvander felt like the literal butt of a joke that was his whole life.

He wondered what the punchline was.

~

Mission accomplished, Ivory thought bitterly as Jeannot smirked his way through another flaw in their discussion. He had gone back to hating Raphael.

He hated Raphael’s hair with its impossible unruliness and the way it mopped around on his head just begging to be combed with the wide spread of someone’s fingers. He hated Raphael’s shoulders and all of their sturdiness under the stretch of his shirt, and the memory in the skin of his own palms of how it had felt to cup them in his hands and hold on. He hated Raphael’s _entire face_ and the way he looked up from under his fringe with his eyes all beseeching and brown and desperately seeking approval as they sat on the floor of a disused office and tried to plan something for this exercise without actually knowing, yet, what their supposed mission was to be. Most of all, he hated Raphael’s mouth and the earnest, puckered shapes he made with it, pursing his lips around his carefully chosen words and kissing them into the spaces in the room, soft and hushed and soothing. Ivory wanted to snatch those sounds up and eat them, he wanted Raphael’s lips murmuring gently suggestive battle plans against the back of his neck as he drifted off to sleep.

Perhaps Adamo knew everything, perhaps the walls really did have ears and the Chief had eyes literally everywhere; perhaps this exercise had nothing to do with training whatsoever and was more about torture. Ivory flicked his lighter twice, three times, and sucked all his anger back down his throat with a tight little sigh and an attempt to swallow his desires before they waltzed treacherously right across his face.

And then Raphael said “this is harder than I thought it would be,” and the sad little sentence dwindled down into one of his tiny, unhappy noises, with the last gutter of a miniature sigh, and Ivory clenched his fist around the metal of his lighter, furious that it had warmed in his palm. It was probably a good thing that Ghislain and Jeannot were here, because Ivory hated Raphael so much right now that if they’d been alone he might have shoved him back against the wall and kissed him again.

“Can we just set them on fire and be done with it,” Ivory said in a furious rush of a sigh and let himself flop backwards onto the floor in defeat. He didn’t want to talk strategy, least of all useless strategy; he and his dragon were made for burning shit down, that was their _job_ , he didn’t care about anything else beyond that, didn’t even care about winning, even though losing would mean having to endure Niall’s and Luvander’s gloating until the next competitive exercise at the least. It was enough that Luvander had ambushed him after the announcement yesterday to give him _advice_ on - well, Ivory didn’t really want to think about this right now, as he was already veering dangerously on the edge of unbidden arousal. In any case, Luvander’s unasked-for expertise had been quite unnecessary, not because Ivory hadn’t known half these things were even _a thing_ that people did - because he hadn’t, if he was honest with himself - but because he was _never going to be in a situation where he would need it_.

Not with Raphael, and not with anyone else.

Today, Luvander had left him blessedly alone so far. He’d seemed subdued and irritated at breakfast, but the tiny spark of concern that had sprung from the whetstone of Ivory’s heart at the sight had been quickly squashed, and he’d enjoyed a relatively quiet morning, since classes had been put on hold while the teams worked out their strategies. Ivory had gone for a long run by himself, frost crunching satisfyingly under his boots in the misty-eyed dawn, then taken a scalding hot shower, still the only one up and awake, though he did pass Niall in the corridor on his way to the mess hall for breakfast. There’d been porridge with cinnamon sugar and cream, and though Evariste had turned his nose up at it, declaring it “inferior quality stuff,” Ivory had enjoyed it after his run, inhaling the hot, spicy steam and sucking the sugar crust off his spoon as the sleepy morning light slowly started to filter into the room.

He tried to think of these things now as he stared at the ceiling of the classroom and barely listened to Jeannot’s newest monologue on the perks of feinting manoeuvres and Ghislain’s musings about a possible snow storm brewing over the mountains. They’d been at it for hours now. Ivory’s head was swimming, and his thumb was starting to feel sore from handling his lighter. He was very nearly drifting off, counting his breaths like when he was running, and jerked violently upright as someone touched his wrist.

“Sorry,” Raphael said immediately, looking alarmed, “I just - you looked like you were falling asleep. Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Ivory ground out, heart pounding in his chest, “can we take a break? We’re getting nowhere.”

Jeannot volunteered to fetch tea and see if he could charm some toast out of the kitchen staff, and Ghislain unfolded his enormous limbs from the pretzel shape he’d spent the last hour contorted into like some kind of leviathan yogi, and went outside to look at the clouds. “That is… probably as ominous as it sounds,” Raphael observed quietly as Ghislain lumbered out of the room, and Ivory was about to agree, rubbing two fingers against his temples, when he realised that the worst case scenario had just worst cased on him: he was alone with Raphael.

Every atom of his body stiffened.

“So, um,” Raphael was already talking, gods, why was he _already talking_ before Ivory had a chance to get out of the room and away, “are you, uh, looking… forward… to it? This exercise, I mean, I just, it’s, um, it’s a chance to spend a lot more time with our girls, isn’t it, so I thought, well. I mean. I’m pleased about that, anyway.”

“Right,” Ivory said, sharply.

“I’m doing something you hate again, aren’t I,” Raphael visibly deflated - not that Ivory was daring to look at him through more than a corner of his eye.

“Existing,” he spat, before he could stop himself, and then launched himself at the door before he could launch himself at Raphael, press his fingers up against his throat and make him stop talking with his tongue in Raphael’s mouth again. He’d probably still taste like cinnamon and fresh snow, and Ivory needed to hurt something about five hours ago.

He pretended he didn’t hear Raphael’s miserable little shadow of a whimper as he practically threw himself out of the door, but the pretence only lasted three paces. It stayed trapped in his mind all the way out to the still frost-nipped grounds, where he paced and fumed until Ghislain appeared around a corner and gave him a nod. “Definitely in for some snow,” he rumbled, and Ivory looked at him like he’d gone mad. “Might want to pack an extra layer,” Ghislain shrugged when Ivory failed to respond to his first statement. “Or if we have to wait the blizzard out we’ll be snuggling up for warmth.” His grin turned abruptly wolfish as he added “I’m calling dibs on Raphael, Jeannot’s a succubus for body heat, bad luck,” before swinging his way back up the steps into the building.

If it was possible for Ivory to hate anything more than he hated Raphael right now, Ghislain was a strong candidate.

~

“...vander! Luvander!”

Niall and Erdeni loomed out of the dirty white gloom to Luvander’s left, trailing greasy wet smoke and paper-thin icicles. It was so sudden that Luvander startled and nearly careened Yesfir into a boulder that appeared equally unexpectedly out of thin air, or maybe Luvander just hadn’t seen it because a snowflake the size of a fist had just smeared up his goggles and obscured his view. He’d heard Ghislain muttering about blizzards this morning; now they were smack dab in the middle of one, and Luvander’s throat constricted in relief at the sight of his teammate, because he’d lost track of Mags and Compagnon long ago.

“We’re going down!” Niall shouted over the sharp whistle of the wind, pointing somewhere ahead. “There’s a cabin not far from here!”

Luvander’s hands felt like they were frozen to the reins, so he gave what he hoped was a fervent nod and eased Yesfir into a dive, desperately trying to focus on Erdeni’s tail whipping nervously through the snow in front of him.

The whole exercise had been a disaster from the start. It had been snowing heavily already when Luvander woke up this morning, thick, preening flakes gluing up the windows of the barracks and pulling faces against the feeble warmth inside, and it had only gotten worse from there. No sooner were they all in the air than they lost sight of each other, only occasionally catching glimpses of a wingtip or firey streak in the distance, not knowing whether those belonged to their own team or the opposing one; all their carefully planned schemes from the equipment room falling apart one by one, not to mention the prospect of ever fulfilling their “mission”. When Luvander touched down in a raging snowdrift that was coarse and heavy like sand, his legs almost gave out under him, the strain of keeping Yesfir airborne and out-manoeuvring rock structures and whatever sparse vegetation grew around these parts finally catching up with him.

“Woah, easy there, I got you.” Niall was at his side without warning, grabbing him under the arms and steadying him while Yesfir shook the ice from her flanks. “Door’s just over there, Ghislain is putting the dragons up in the stables, come on.”

Luvander gave Yesfir a tired pat and let himself be led through the snow, half carried by Niall, who kept up a stream of low, comforting words until they were inside. For a moment, he had to squeeze his eyes shut against the onslaught of buttery warm, sizzling light, and by the time he managed to open them again all the way, Niall had pushed him down in an armchair near a large fireplace and was wrapping Luvander’s hands around a tin cup filled to the brim with hot cocoa.

“Bastion,” Luvander muttered, and looked around. They were in the main room of some sort of military mountain lodge, an ugly concrete block without windows, doors leading off to what Luvander assumed must be sleeping quarters and, hopefully, some kind of bathroom, since he had to pee really badly now that he was on the ground again and didn’t much fancy going back outside to do his business. Compagnon was poking at a bubbling pot over the fire, which was where Luvander’s hot chocolate must have come from, and Magoughin was over in a corner trying to talk a furious-looking Ivory into accepting a cup himself.

“Bottoms up,” Niall grinned, though he looked rather grim - as grim as Niall could look, Luvander supposed. He took a small sip and Niall nodded approvingly, but Luvander’s stomach had tightened at the look on his face and was refusing to unclench even for hot cocoa.

“Where are the others?”

“Hum,” Niall hunched his shoulders and squared his jaw. His knuckles had turned white around the edges where he was clutching at his mug. “Adamo's team turned around just before the storm got out of hand. As for Jeannot and Raphael... Well. We’re not sure. Yet.”

“Blown off course,” Compagnon said from the fireplace, without, for once, giggling. “At least, we’re assuming. They had to go off and… recon… whatever the shit you guys do, anyway. Last we saw of them was around that lower escarpment, just before the blizzard went full force.”

“But that was,” Luvander swallowed, tasting iron and alarm. “That was hours ago.”

Nobody said anything, the fire prickling against the head rush of horrified silence, the spit and hiss of dry wood momentarily out of place. Then Niall’s hand came to alight on Luv’s shoulder again, bracing and soldierly, and “drink up,” he said again, with all the stoicism of his military background wrapped boldly around the words.

Luvander didn’t have a military background though, not really, and he felt like he might be sick.

Time passed agonisingly, the way it is wont to do when something is wrong and there are limited distractions. Magoughin managed to concoct some sort of brothy stew from various tins of vegetables and carefully stowed twists of spice stashed in one of the metal trunks that lined one wall of the cabin, also serving as miserable, uncomfortable seats if necessary. Ivory sat there when he wasn’t pacing, looking like someone had held him back and made him watch while they tortured and burned his piano. Luvander understood, of course; recognised that rage as a thin façade for fear and distress over Raphael’s unknown whereabouts. He didn’t say anything. If Ivory had wanted to talk about it, he’d have found a way to siphon Luvander away from the rest of the airmen. The way things were, Luvander wasn’t entirely sure if Ivory was speaking to him at all just now, and he certainly wasn’t going to risk his own neck attempting a conversation during a crisis.

Ghislain, Mags and Compagnon had several hushed chats half hidden by the crackle of the fireplace, probably about whether they should risk anyone else by sending out a search party for Jeannot and Raphael. Niall found a packet of cards somewhere and shuffled them repeatedly, but didn’t actually invite anybody to a game. Luvander stayed put, clinging to his half-drunk, now cold mug as if letting go of it would incite the next catastrophe. He jumped when Niall reappeared at his shoulder like a shadow - nobody having bothered to look out candles beyond one in the lantern outside the door to show the cabin was occupied. “You look shattered,” Niall murmured by his ear. “There’s cots in the next room, why don’t you get some sleep? Not much point in all of us exhausting ourselves. We can take shifts.”

Luvander struggled briefly against the weight of his own exhaustion, then nodded and stood up. He did manage to find a small wash room, but the water was ice cold and the towels smelled like dust and mould. When he made his way back to the room Niall had indicated, Niall was sitting on one of the cots, looking hunched and sheepish in the bulbous light of a greasy candle.

“Hey,” Luvander said, gingerly sitting down next to him. “You okay?”

Niall smiled, still looking grim.

“Yeah. You?”

“I guess.”

They were quiet for a while, listening to the faint thrum of the snow storm outside. There was a clatter next door, as if someone had thrown one of the tin cups against a wall. Luvander had a feeling he knew who might have been the perpetrator of this noise.

“Ghislain tried to talk to him,” Niall said blankly. “He’s really…”

“Yeah,” Luvander whispered, his stomach roiling at the thought that Raphael and Jeannot might never reach the lodge, and his hand sought out Niall’s of his own accord, squeezing hard. “He cares for Raphael. I think.”

Niall squeezed back, then leaned over to bury his face in Luvander’s neck and inhale.

“We could distract each other,” he murmured lightly, lips ghosting over the exposed skin where Luvander had let his jacket fall open. Luvander tensed for a moment, fighting the familiar tickle of arousal in his lower belly while at the same time tilting his head to the side to give Niall better access.

“What about the others?”

“Well, Compagnon relieved me of those playing cards earlier,” Niall said, and Luvander could feel a small smile sketching itself across his neck on Niall’s lips. “He challenged Ghislain and Magoughin together, the fool. They’ll be busy cleaning him out for a while yet.”

Luvander felt whatever flimsy resolve he might have once possessed drifting like thin smoke on a windy day. Niall was like a stone on a seabed, he realised, forever gently wearing and encouraging and breaking all Luvander’s flinty, rough-edged guard down into grains of sand. But who was he to challenge the power of the fucking sea, he thought wearily, his limbs aching. There was a tug in his veins which asked for Yesfir, so close and yet not, and he wished that their bond was something more telepathic. Maybe it was thinking about the way she’d hulked up her shoulders against the storm earlier and told him to stay low on her neck and hang on tight, and maybe it was Niall with his smooth pebble persuasion and the heat from his mouth, but right there on the stark wooden cot bed with its thin, hard mattress, Luvander felt a dizzying rush of warmth in his gut. “Yeah,” he whispered, the single word shuddering between them and making the candle gutter. “Yeah, okay, then.”

Except then Niall’s fingers grazed across the edge of his jaw, nudging his face around, and he kissed Luvander full on the mouth. That was something new: boldly intimate, and it felt invasive in the best way imaginable. Niall’s mouth was softer, sweeter, questioning and curious in a way he never was when they had sex. There was no demanding, persistent ferocity in this kiss, it was quiet and delicate, like he was asking for permission, carefully considerate as he caught at Luvander’s mouth with his own, teasing his lips apart and testing, requesting, with the merest flicker from the tip of his tongue. His fingers were feather-light and cautious just under Luv’s jaw bone, the backs of his knuckles resting gently against the side of his neck.

Luvander remembered the sour twist of envy when he’d seen Raphael and Ivory kissing in the common room two nights ago, and his hand found its own way to Niall’s shoulder, fingers curling almost possessively around and bunching in the loose fabric of his shirt. Niall’s free hand spread itself flat and coercive against Luvander’s waist and then, with a hint of a shove and a small pinch of cotton they were tumbling backwards, landing flat on the cot with Luvander on top. Niall hummed something which sounded like malty warm, wholly comfortable pleasure, the sort of sound Luvander had heard people make around well-deserved good food, the first coffee on a slow morning, or a piping hot shower coming in from the rain. He swallowed it hungrily. Niall’s hands palmed their way flat up his back, either side of his spine, coming to rest against his shoulder blades and holding him right where he was. They didn’t stop kissing.

They didn’t progress from kissing, either, and that was confusing, but Luvander was tired and Niall was warm and the kissing was so incredibly nice, lazy and comforting and arousing in a mellow, peaceful sort of way. There wasn’t the rush and thrill and nag that usually accompanied their couplings, this was different. It wasn’t that they weren’t aroused or couldn’t have taken it further; it felt more like neither of them wanted to. Luvander lost track of time as the candle stub puckered and twisted in on itself in a sallow pool of its own wax. At some point Niall interrupted them to lick his fingers, stretch an arm out with a disapproving grunt and pinch it out altogether. Then, he reeled Luvander back in closer and kissed him again, side by side now on the narrow bed, his hand once again caught in the web of cambric at Luvander’s waist.

Eventually, he kissed a fluttery trail of butterflies up from the corner of Luv’s mouth to the lobe of his ear, and murmured “distracted yet?” warm and wet and drowsy.

“Mmn,” Luvander pressed closer and nodded, touched his mouth to Niall’s collar bone to feel him shiver, and confessed “I’m tired.”

“Go to sleep, babe,” Niall agreed, running his hand down to Luv’s hip and smoothly rolling him over to face the other way, tucking them back together again like dovetailed parentheses. His mouth found the back of Luvander’s neck and stifled a yawn. “S’been a rough day.”

They woke up to a bang and a yelp two hours later, as something livid and violent happened on the other side of the door.


	12. Lesson Twelve: Dirty Laundry And How (Not) To Air It

It was way past midnight when Raphael and Jeannot arrived at the lodge.

Ghislain heard them first, snapping alert from where he’d been dozing in Luvander’s vacated armchair and moving to stand in front of the door within seconds as Magoughin and Compagnon were still rubbing the sleep from their eyes. Ivory stopped in his furious pacing, straining his ears, hearing nothing out of the ordinary until he realised that what had blended so seamlessly into the rush of the storm were the metallic chirps of dragons outside.

Then the door opened, and in toppled a pair of snow-crusted, blood-spattered airmen; first Jeannot, whose ponytail had come undone in the storm so that his hair was now sticking up on one side, frozen stiff, which would have been an almost comical sight if he hadn’t been supporting a half-unconscious looking Raphael with bloody gashes down his side and a pronounced limp in his step.

Ghislain opened his mouth to swear, but Ivory beat him to it.

He was barely aware of his own feet marching across the room, but he didn’t stop walking as he reached the newcomers, just fisted both hands in the front of Raphael’s jacket and slammed him up against the door, which banged shut from the impact; Raphael yelped in pain, and Ivory fucking lost it.

For a while, he simply screamed a mix of profanities and variations of _you could have died_ in Raphael’s wide-eyed face, until his throat was raw and his fingers hurt from the strain of clutching Raphael’s collar so brutally tight, and Ghislain put a hand on his shoulder that Ivory violently shrugged off. Then he gathered Raphael up in something that could scarcely be described as a hug, it was so hard and uncomfortable. He could feel Raphael shake in his arms, though whether from cold or exertion or pain or shock he couldn’t tell, and finally let go to inspect the damage that turned out to be a handful of superficial scratches, a twisted ankle and some singed and soaked flight gear, nowhere near as severe as it had looked to Ivory when they’d come in.

“Fuck,” Ivory whispered hoarsely, finally letting his hands drop away and feeling utterly spent. The room was dead silent, and there was a ringing in his ears like after an explosion, which, he supposed, wasn’t an entirely inaccurate way of putting it.

To his great astonishment, Raphael was smiling when he looked up.

“Hello to you, too,” he mumbled, lifting a hand to weakly pluck at Ivory’s sleeve before letting his arm drop back to his side. “Sorry we’re late to the party.”

“Fuck you,” Ivory said, without any feeling whatsoever.

“What happened?” Ghislain demanded, a verbal mallet to the ice of tension in the room. Raphael swallowed and the smile died on his mouth at the prospect of having to report even though Ghislain wasn’t Adamo. Ivory knew Raphael grew unnaturally nervous about having to explain himself in any capacity.

Luckily, Jeannot stepped in with a mock salute, and explained how nothing had _happened_ , per se, he and Raphael had simply been several miles out from the others when the storm had forced them to make a landing on one of the smaller plateaux. “Didn’t want to risk the girls,” he shrugged one shoulder and stuck his fingers in his thawing hair, twisting it out of its shocked shape with half a wince. “Raphael got blown off Natalia just as we landed, scraped himself a bit on her wing, that’s all. She already had words with him about being so clumsy,” he added, looking pointedly at Ivory, who kept his chin up and stubbornly refused to look away. “And also refused to make him walk here,” Jeannot finished, “because, you know,” one corner of his mouth did its unacceptable thing, and Ivory gritted his teeth - he didn’t have Luvander’s unfortunate tendency toward crushes on every distantly attractive quirk or habit his fellow men possessed, but he also wasn’t genuinely cold-blooded, whatever Amery liked to say. It was a damned good job, Ivory thought with a vertiginous wealth of gratitude, that Amery’s team hadn’t gone up with them and so he wasn’t here now. “Furious affection, and all that,” shit, Jeannot was still talking. “A lot of fire and rage to cover up a big squishy heart.”

“That’ll do,” Ghislain rumbled warningly.

“Yes, sir,” Jeannot smirked, “who made you chief in our illustrious leader’s absence, anyway? Not that I want to fight you for it, I’m just curious.”

“There’s hot water by the fire, I suggest you get cleaned up,” was all Ghislain had to say on that score, and Jeannot gave him another cheekily elaborate salute, winked at Magoughin and Compagnon, and swaggered over to the water pot, whistling through his teeth. Ivory could still feel the cabin echoing between his ears, the sick, molten rouge of embarrassment curdling in his stomach and creeping up the back of his neck. It didn’t help when Ghislain laid one of his giant hands on Raphael’s shoulder, which looked significantly smaller than usual as a result, and asked him steadily “are you alright?” Ivory simultaneously felt the need to both hug Ghislain and punch him in the face - neither of which, he knew, was advisable.

Raphael nodded.

“You’re pretty fucking pale,” Ghislain scowled. “Not going to swoon?”

“Haha,” Raphael said bravely, “certainly not, sir, though if I don’t get to eat something soon I can’t make you any more promises like that.”

Ghislain grinned, slow as a winter sunrise, and nodded towards the fireplace. “Mags cooked up something that tasted a lot better than I would’ve imagined given it came from tins gods only know how old. Help yourself if there’s any left. Ivory’ll give you a hand,” he finished with an eyebrow across the room at Ivory’s taut roost leaning against the wall with his arms folded.

“So,” Raphael shot him a lopsided grin when, under the scrutinising Ghislainic gaze, it was impossible for Ivory _not_ to assist Raphael over to fire and food. “Were you worried about me?”

“No,” Ivory grit out, “just worried that they’d find someone even more annoying than you to replace you if you died.”

Raphael chuckled, awkwardly peeling himself out of his soaked jacket and bending down to tug off his boots. Amusement turned into a hiss of pain as he pried his injured ankle free, which was angry red and swollen, but didn’t seem to be broken when Ivory gingerly felt it with his fingertips. There were first aid supplies in the trunks, and Ivory dug out some gauze to bandage Raphael’s foot while he ate with unsteady hands, figuring it had been cooled enough out there and didn’t need another ice pack. Then he methodically cleaned the scrapes and cuts on Raphael’s face, arm and leg, even the ones that didn’t need it, partly to have something to do and partly enjoying it when Raphael winced at the sting of antiseptic. The others left them alone - Ghislain had seemingly resumed his nap, Compagnon had gone to see the dragons since Jeannot had informed him of a minor technical problem with Al Atan and Compagnon was the resident mechanics expert, Magoughin was whipping up another batch of hot chocolate and cleaning up the empty dishes, and Jeannot had fallen asleep in his armchair. Niall and Luvander, who had shown up at some point during Ivory’s little temper tantrum, only came over briefly to pat Raphael on the back and tease him half-heartedly about clumsy landings and keeping a tighter hold on his girl, before disappearing into the adjoining room again.

Ivory was grudgingly grateful that no one spoke to him.

Once Raphael had finished eating, Magoughin pushed two mugs of hot chocolate on him and Ivory, who hadn’t had any before and crumpled under Magoughin’s stern gaze at last, taking a tentative sip and finding to his surprise that it actually made him feel better. Magoughin nodded approvingly, yawned, and followed Niall and Luvander to the sleeping cots after Raphael had assured him three times that he was far too wired to go to sleep now and happy to stay up until Ghislain or Jeannot woke to take the next watch.

Ivory took another sip of hot chocolate and wondered vaguely if Magoughin had found some alcohol to put in it, because it burned a bit too sharply down his throat as he swallowed.

“What about you, then?” Raphael asked gently, hands carefully cradling his cup in his lap. “You must be tired…”

“I’m fine,” Ivory said flatly. He was exhausted, yes, and silently dreading being alone with Raphael in a room with Ghislain and Jeannot, however much asleep they appeared to be, but he didn’t want Raphael to stay up by himself after all he’d been through either. Raphael looked wrecked, and though some treacherous part of Ivory’s brain still purred with appraisal at the sight, it wasn’t the good kind of wrecked.

“Huh,” Raphael murmured. “And here I was, thinking you were avoiding me again.”

Ivory shot him a scathing look, then turned his eyes to the floor, loosely linking his arms around his crossed legs and pressing his lips together.

“Look, if you could just tell me what you want from me…” Raphael sighed, all the humour gone from his voice now.

“No,” Ivory hissed, the word barely audible, because he was pretty sure he’d just seen Jeannot open one eye, and he did _not_ want to do this here, or now, or _ever_.

“But -”

Ivory was on his feet and up in Raphael’s space again in a flash, both hands gripping the arms of Raphael’s chair and his face right in front of Raphael’s.

“I want you to drop it,” he breathed furiously, fingers digging into the lumpy fabric of the old armchair. “I want you to not get yourself killed on a fucking training exercise just because you can’t stay on your bloody dragon. I want you to stop fucking _looking_ at me like that and I _don’t_ want - that thing to happen again. Now go and lie down, I’ll take the watch.”

Raphael swallowed and his mouth twisted sideways for a moment like he was about to cry, then he pulled himself together and nodded, heaving himself out of the armchair when Ivory stepped back. He was halfway to the cots when he turned around.

“Shame about the... _thing_ ,” he said quietly, looking Ivory up and down in a way that made Ivory shiver with warmth. “I wouldn’t have minded, if it’d happened again.”

He shrugged, half sheepish and half defiant, and limped the last few steps to the door, leaving Ivory behind in a mess of confused longing and regret.

~

Luvander woke up to a scene that was fresh from his deepest nightmares: Magoughin and Raphael were asleep on two of the beds in the tiny bunker bedroom and there was a fresh candle flickering warm and golden on a low table along the opposite wall. He was paralysed, pinned into place by the awful question of which one of them had brought it in and when. After that deliciously public possession of Raphael by Ivory, he and Niall had definitely gone back to bed together. Luvander had tried valiantly to crawl into a bed of his own - well, alright, perhaps it hadn’t been _so_ valiant an attempt, but there had _been_ an attempt and he was fiercely maintaining to himself that he was proud about that. Only as the door had clunked shut behind them with a soft, solid bump that plunged the little sleeping space into immediate pitch darkness, because they very definitely had not had a candle with them that time, Niall had hooked an arm around his chest and staggered them both back where they had been before with a sleepy, muttered “c’mere, you.”

Luvander would have said, if anyone asked, that he was simply too damn tired to protest, which was of course not even half the truth. Niall had yanked the blankets back over them both carelessly, flapping fabric every which way until they were both buried under as many layers as possible, because there was nothing like getting up on a snowy night from a warm shared sleep to remind your sluggish body that it was fucking freezing. “So I guess Amy owes me a small fortune,” he’d half grunted into Luvander’s shoulder, licked his ear once, and then been asleep again before Luvander could think about asking what he was talking about.

He was so busy panicking when he woke up about Magoughin or Raphael - or, worse, both of them - having observed him and Niall spooning beneath seven blankets all night that he didn’t realise for a full five minutes that Niall had already got up. When he did, Luvander’s stomach squeezed in on itself like crumpled cardboard, and he hunched himself smaller under the sheets. So much for that kissing, then.

It was probably for the best.

He avoided Niall as they packed up and got dressed for heading home - easily done, since Ghislain ran a tight ship and there was no space for straggling. Adamo would be pacing the floor fretting about his own neck being on the line if he’d set them an exercise that had slaughtered eight dragons before the next Ke’Han attack had even happened. Now that the blizzard had blown itself out and the skies were clear, iced blue all the way back to Thremedon, there was no excuse for lingering. Compagnon had apparently solved whatever Jeannot had been worried about for Al Atan, and Raphael was cheerfully hobbling on his sprained ankle without much of a fuss. Ivory’s face was painted in mottled neutrals and furies, and nobody was insane enough to challenge him on anything when he looked that way. “Looks like the poor piano’s in for a royal pounding,” Jeannot whispered to Luvander at one point with a grin.

They arrived back at the barracks in a tame flurry of snowflakes. Before they could fill Amery, Ace, Merritt and Evariste in on their icy adventures, there was a very serious conversation with the chief, which involved a lot more shouting than Luvander thought was completely necessary given that their worst injury was Raphael’s foot. It was also a lot less shouting than he had anticipated, however, and he allowed his mind to wander halfway through the interview since Ghislain and Compagnon were answering most of Adamo’s questions anyhow. Niall caught his eye and winked, and Luvander felt his face turn rosy. He looked away, unsmiling.

Back in the common room at long last, the other boys demanded very different details from those the chief had wanted, and Magoughin threw himself bodily into an armchair with an emphatic “ _well_ ” followed by a self-satisfied “gather round, boys, bedtime story time, and is this one a whopper.” Luvander’s blood shivered and crunched up sharp like the crisp, dry snow underfoot. Magoughin had already looked suspiciously at him about the equipment room, and then he’d been in the bedroom last night, possibly with a light. This did not bode well.

It grew worse when Niall sidled up behind him, whispered “oi,” with his chin on Luvander’s shoulder, and openly pinched his bum.

“Can you _not_ ,” Luvander squawked before he could stop himself, lurching sideways like a startled hen.

“Calm down,” Niall pouted sulkily, “why are you so crabby today, anyway?” He reached out and ruffled Luvander’s hair, his fingers catching and lingering just a fraction too affectionately long to be passed off as comradely banter. “Is it ‘cos I didn’t bring you breakfast in bed in our romantic little mountain get-away,” he cooed, and Luvander wanted to slap him.

Instead he shoved him off, a bit less kindly than Niall probably deserved, and hissed something about wanting to hear Magoughin’s unique interpretation of Ivory’s very public screaming fit. Niall rolled his eyes, but draped himself obediently across one of the sofas while Magoughin launched into the tale with gusto, surrounded by avid listeners. In fact, Luvander noticed that the only one absent apart from the chief and Jeannot, who’d taken the second watch the night before and been forced to retire early by Ghislain, was the very person Magoughin was currently in the process of rendering a passable imitation of, Raphael’s feeble but smiling protests of “it wasn’t that bad” and “he was just worried” going patently unheard.

Luvander only half-followed the story. He was tired and anxious, and he felt bad for Ivory, as interesting as that little display of furious concern for Raphael had been. His eyes trailed idly over the keys of the piano in the corner…

“...and here we are, fit as fiddles, ‘cept Raphael’s a bit limpy, of course,” Magoughin finished, winking at Raphael, whose cheeks were suddenly a bit too red considering how far away he was sitting from the fireplace, though he was sheepishly laughing along. Luvander’s stomach churned with mingled relief and leftover nervousness, still not convinced that no one had seen Niall and him share that cot last night, but then Niall was in his space again, murmuring something about the equipment room in his ear.

“Gods, will you two get a room already!”

A cushion hit the side of Niall’s head just as his hand was creeping downwards to squeeze Luvander’s arse again, and Luvander abruptly took a few steps back, causing Niall to lose his balance and topple over. He caught himself on the back of the sofa, grinning and lobbing the cushion back at Amery, who was perching on the arm of Raphael’s chair and looking unimpressed.

“We were just about to!” Niall cheerfully called back, and it seemed to Luvander that the conversation lagged a bit around the room then.

“Ew, fucking hell,” Evariste exclaimed, catching the cushion as Amery tossed it into the room at random and managing to hit Merritt in the face with it.

Luvander thought he heard Ghislain mutter “you’d think they _didn’t_ just spend the whole night wrapped around each other…” and at last, the shocked numbness clicked into hysteria.

“Go on then Niall, take care of your _boyfriend_ , we can play cards without you, Raphael can take your place, right Raphs?” Amery chuckled, grabbing Raphael in half a headlock and messing up his hair while Raphael whined and tried to wriggle out of his grip.

“I’m not his boyfriend!” Luvander said, only it came out as a panicked shout rather than a casual comment, and this time, the room really did grow quiet. “It was just cold last night,” he added desperately, inadvertently catching Magoughin’s half-raised eyebrow from his armchair. “It was just - we don’t - ha, we’re not - it’s just an arrangement,” he dwindled into a fretful, pleading whisper, one hand half reaching for and half repelling Niall, fingers open like a starfish in mid-air between them. “It’s just an arrangement,” he repeated, “when we can’t see the ladies. That’s all.”

“Mm,” Niall folded his arms and looked more unimpressed than he had done that time Merritt had spilt the last of his favourite strawberry jam at breakfast, ruining it into a bowl of scrambled eggs. “Yes, of course. You’ve got a girlfriend, do remind everyone again about her. I’m just your _arrangement_.” He said the word like it was acidic, biting the end off in a clipped click against his teeth. Nobody else made a sound, and the air in the common room was stifling, thick like cold soup and even less appetising. Luvander wanted to throw up.

“You started it,” he reminded Niall, bitterly.

“Yeah,” Niall hugged his arms closer to his chest with his hands on his elbows, the movement abruptly shifting his posture from aggressive to self-protective. “Yeah, I did. Starting to wonder why.”

“Gods, can we _not_ do this,” Luvander broke suddenly, hissing and furious and this was _not_ part of what they’d agreed on, the entire arrangement had been built around it being just the two of them and Niall was _so_ inappropriate and _so_ careless and _so_ fucking attractive even right now, and he just - if they were going to have this conversation at all, Luvander wanted it to be the way they’d managed everything else so far - away from the other men. “I’m just,” he shook his head, swallowed something tight and metallic in his throat, dropped his head back for a second with half a disparaging, snorted choke of laughter, and then pressed his lips together and looked at Niall; said “no,” and made to shoulder past him out of the room.

Except Niall said “no,” too, and caught him, roughly, shoved him back into the space between the sofas and the piano and rounded on him furiously like a penned lion. “No, don’t you fucking fuck off now,” he railed, “you always try and do this, and - no, just - no, I might have started it but you started _this_ and you’re going to bloody stay and finish it as well.”

“I’m not talking about this _here_ ,” Luvander spat.

“Yes, you fucking are,” Niall shouted, windmilling his arms like a lunatic. “It’s already happening, you’re already talking about it, everyone already knows, why bother pretending they haven’t been here the last five minutes? What the bastion is your problem, anyway, do you actually think,” he sneered condescendingly, which was ugly on anyone but somehow on Niall right now it looked vulnerable, hurt and betrayed, and Luvander’s chest felt too tight. “Do you _actually think_ that anyone gives a shit what you do when you’re not flying? You’re not that special, none of us are, gods’ sake, no one _cares_ , Luvander--”

“You seem to, right now,” Luvander couldn’t quite catch the quiet, sideways sarcasm before it tripped off his tongue, interrupting Niall and freezing the already chilled air between them.

Niall stopped, dropped his flailing hands, mutely shook his head and then said, quietly, “I’m so sick of your shit.”

“ _You_ started this shit.”

“So you keep saying,” Niall’s voice peaked upward again, “and hey, guess what, nobody cares about that either! That’s not what this is about.”

“I don’t even _know_ what this is about,” Luvander had a little flail of his own then, because what was the point now, anyway. This entire scene was disastrous and probably career-ending, if not life-ending when the rest of the boys (except Ivory and Raphael and, possibly, Ace) decided to form a lynch mob and cut the sick cindy root out of their tree before it could infect the rest of the forest. That’s what Luvander’s father had said happened to that boy from across the river four years ago. “I don’t want to discuss it,” he muttered again, a cold trickle of horror down his back not at the idea that the others might turn on him, but that they would also now target Niall, who didn’t really deserve it.

“Too damn late,” he was saying now, still apparently screaming pissed and bitter as fresh lemon.

“No,” Luvander bit back his terror and insisted, “no, I’m not going to talk about it like this, there’s nothing to talk about,” he tried, desperately, because in theory nothing incriminating had actually been plainly verbalised, there was the tiniest sliver of a possibility that they could pass this off as something else, though bastion only knew what.

Except Niall had to ruin that, of course, with his openness and his complete disregard for social niceties and other people’s feelings. Luvander closed his eyes and let the realisation that everything really was headed for the shit wash over him like an ice cold shower as Niall said “isn’t there?” and then: “I can think of something, how about the fact we’ve been fucking for weeks, how about that, can we talk about that? I mean someone ought to tell your precious girl, really, and since you haven’t been to see her for the best part of a month it may as well be someone else here…”

“Don’t bring her into this,” Luvander snapped.

“Why not,” Niall challenged, “isn’t she the reason we’ve just been an arrangement the whole time? Which, in case anyone listening wasn’t sure, is a fancy avoidant way of saying fuck buddy, bit on the side, you know,” he raised his voice to announce. “Or has it really got nothing to do with your bird after all, is it actually just because you’re a fucking coward?” he rounded on Luvander again, his eyes narrow and mouth a thin, hard line which Luvander had never seen before.

“What are you talking about?”

“You, Luvander,” Niall shook his head in distaste and pointed at him, drawing a limp circle in the air with one finger. “You, and this, I’m talking about you and your ridiculous internalised homophobia which doesn’t stop you going to bed with me but makes you put on this shit show about having a girlfriend and wanting it to be _just between us_ , our little secret, isn’t that sweet. Well, fuck that. Fuck it. It’s bullshit and it’s your bullshit, not mine, and I’m sick of it. I don’t know what you’re so afraid of but I’m tired of your pathetic secret-keeping games and trying to act like we don’t all know you’re a giant flaming cindy--”

“What in the name of the Esar’s sparkling balls is going on here,” Adamo bellowed from the doorway, cutting Niall off mid-rant, which was, Luvander thought with a weary, defeatist resignation, just about the only way this could get worse. “If you lot are airing your dirty laundry in public again you can have the fucking decency to be quiet about it,” he said irritably. “Some people in this joint are trying to work, I’ll not have your lovers’ tiffs wrecking my paperwork again. Solve your fucking problems like adults.”

“Excuse me,” Luvander managed to chip into the brief silence that always followed the chief’s voice, barely registering anything he’d said at all. This time, nobody stopped him from weaving around Adamo in the doorway and leaving the room, the clipped polish of his shoes marching down the stone corridor like a ricochet of tiny cannon fire.

“Niall,” Adamo said when the sound had faded, and it was both question and command.

“Yes, sir,” Niall agreed weakly.

“Glad to hear it,” Adamo replied, and disappeared again.

The common room wallowed for a couple of minutes in the thick aftermath of anger, nobody brave enough to be the first to speak. Niall picked at a thread on the cuff of his knitted jumper and kept his eyes on the floor, but didn’t back down; didn’t leave. He’d grown up in a barracks, he knew the way men were - there were always those who found cindy behaviour distasteful but, as his mother had said when he’d been fifteen and she’d caught him fumbling with the general’s son after a Christmas party, for every man who turned his nose up, there were probably two more who’d take their pants down. The airmen were an elite group, Niall had reasoned right from the start, there were too few of them to risk any actual internal wars. As if the dragons would allow it, anyway. Chief Adamo could act the leader as much as he wanted, they all knew who it really was that kept them in line.

Besides, he’d told Amery weeks ago.

It was Amery who eventually found the words to slice through the heavy fabric of the room, bravely rising to the challenge of interrupting the weight of nine people who didn’t know what to say. “Mate,” he offered, clearing his throat and crossing the room to place a hand on Niall’s shoulder. He indicated the door with one nod of his shiny-haired head. “Want me to talk to him?”

“Shouldn’t I?” Niall checked, subdued and reluctant.

“Well,” Amery shrugged, “Just thought… you know, he’s clearly paranoid, maybe if one of us explained that no one gives a shit who he beds as long as he’s gentlemanly about it,” he shot a glance around the room at the other men, but nobody spoke up to disagree, “then he might believe it more? You know, if it came from someone else?”

Niall swallowed. His throat hurt. “Maybe,” he agreed, feebly, and continued picking at his sleeve. “Don’t make it worse?” he begged quietly, almost under his breath.

“Don’t think I could, really,” Amery grinned half-heartedly, and then gave Niall’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “I’ll do my best, anyway.”

~

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry, she’s not working tonight, it’s her day off.”

The madam looked at him with something like pity in her eyes, and Luvander felt his stomach churn with misplaced irritation and shame. She didn’t offer him any of the other girls - Maisie was draped over the piano in the back, looking bored, and some of the others were lounging idly on the sofas - and Luvander was pretty sure this was because she thought he’d gone and fallen in love with Holly and was in for some good old heartbreak when the illusion of having her to himself finally shattered. She must’ve seen many such heartbreaks live in action in her establishment over the years, and it was a mark of how esteemed a customer Luvander was by now that she didn’t try to milk him for more money any chance she thought she still had.

“I see,” he said gently, keeping his voice low and pleasant and bending down to kiss the madam’s hand, discreetly pressing a few coins into her palm. “Have you any idea where she might have gone? I promise I shan’t harass her, I just wanted to return this.”

He produced a silk handkerchief from his pocket that Holly had given him the last time they’d seen each other, as a token that he could show off to the boys later. The madam squinted at it, rubbing two coins together in her palm with pursed lips as she thought about this, then relented.

“She and Aria were saying something about the theatre,” she muttered as the coins disappeared in a pocket in her voluminous skirts. “That’s all I can tell you. Good evening, Airman.”

Luvander gave a small bow of thanks and made his way out into the street again. It was bitterly cold and just getting dark, the light of the street lamps were winding like curious cats about their posts in the gloom, and snow was still falling thickly. Not many people were out on a night like this. Luvander pulled his hood up, having forgone fancy dress in favour of some less conspicuous clothes today, though he wished he hadn’t now that he was headed for the theatre district. He’d just have to hope that Holly and Aria had gone to one of the smaller, shabbier ones that didn’t look twice at the state of your wardrobe so long as you had enough cash on you to pay for your ticket.

For a while, he just walked. Most of the shows had only just started, and he didn’t really feel like watching any of them tonight, since they would only remind him of Niall, anyway. He bought himself a cup of tea at one of the stalls dotted around the district and let his feet take him along the main street, which was littered with posters advertising the current plays, and Luvander idly studied them trying to figure out which of them might have caught Holly’s and Aria’s fancy. In the end, he decided not to risk it, and simply sat on a bench in the little patch of green off the main street, which was where most of the revellers would pass through on their way home later, hoping to spot them when they walked past.

Somehow, he must have fallen asleep.

A small, warm hand tapped him awake, and Luvander flinched and sucked in a startled breath before Holly’s face swam into focus, framed by curls and a loose headscarf tied in an artful fashion to shield against the cold. Behind her, a red-haired gentleman dressed in a velvet suit and top hat waited, nervously scanning the crowds.

“Hello, Airman,” Holly whispered around a pucker of a smile like an unripe berry. “Lucky I spotted you before a pickpocket picked your pockets.”

She winked, cheekily holding up Luvander’s wallet before tucking it back into the inside pocket of his coat and patting the fabric over it.

“Holly,” Luvander said, and took her gloved hands in his. “Holly, I messed up.”

“No shit,” said the gentleman, and Luvander realised with a start that it wasn’t a gentleman at all, but Aria with her hair arranged smartly underneath the hat. She grinned wryly at him and linked her arm with Holly’s. “How about we find ourselves a nice, quiet spot somewhere with a fireplace and you can tell us all about that mess.”

Luvander made a sound that wasn’t quite a sob and stood up. “Yes, please...”


	13. Lesson Thirteen: Home-Makers and Heart-Breakers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic now comes with its very own mixtape made by co-author moonix! You can listen to it [here](http://8tracks.com/anjamarietta/lessons-in-flying).

“You, um. You missed the shit that went down earlier,” Raphael told Ivory, lying flat on his back on his bed with his hands behind his head. Ivory had been out walking - well, pacing was a better description - until the last of the pale winter light had shimmied down behind the trees and the long shadows had melted into the night. The snow looked eerily grey and unwelcoming after dusk, and Ivory had finally made his way back to his dorm in spite of feeling as though he still had several miles of confusion to walk off. He hadn’t expected Raphael to be stretched out on his bunk with one of his books - usually he read in the common room.

“Oh?” he asked, trying to sound nonchalant and hoping he was getting better at hiding his anxieties without necessarily sounding like he wanted to pick a fight or stab a wounded animal, which was how Sebastian always described it.

“Niall and Luvander exploded all over the common room,” Raphael explained with a sigh, and Ivory didn’t need the details. Whatever had happened wouldn’t have been pretty, those two were already explosive enough when they were trying to be discreet. A little nugget of sympathy trickled hotly between his ribs, however, and Ivory turned his face away, not wanting Raphael to know that he was _concerned_. “I was just thinking,” Raphael said quietly, the words warm and inviting in the cosy glow of the little circle of light he was reading by, which sat golden and fuzzy against the rest of the unwarmed room. He pushed himself up and sat forward, resting his forearms on his knees; looked up at Ivory still by the door and said “with a view to, you know, not ever being anything like them, would you mind if we talked about that thing? Just so I don’t… slip up later? It can be the last thing we ever say about it if you want, I just… I don’t ever want to make you look at me the way those two were looking at each other this afternoon, it was…” he trailed off, shook his head, and looked sick. “It was horrible.”

“I meant it,” Ivory lied quickly, stalling any further descriptions Raphael might have wanted to offer him on exactly how unpleasant the afternoon’s scene had been. “I don’t want it to happen again.”

“Okay,” Raphael nodded, blinking a momentary wistfulness off his face to leave a calm, unreadable canvas. Ivory wasn’t sure he liked that, either - Raphael was usually so obvious about everything; so completely incapable of keeping anything emotional hidden. “That’s fine. Can we still, though,” he paused, frowned and swallowed around the careful selection of the correct terminology. Ivory watched him, staying by the door. He could practically see Raphael mentally pulling on kid gloves to try and handle him with, and that was uncomfortable, too, but Ivory couldn’t exactly fault him for it. “I just, I thought we were friends,” Raphael finished, softly, a summer whisper in the frigid wintry air of the building. “Of a sort. Can we still be?”

Ivory felt something in him unspooling like thread, and while his legs were still thrumming with restlessness, exhaustion was finally catching up with him, making him heavy and sluggish, breaking down his barriers with tender fingers. He sighed, rubbed his fingertips over his face and padded over to sit on the edge of Raphael’s bed.

“Okay,” he said, pulling one of his legs up and wrapping his arms around it. “I’d like that.”

Raphael looked unspeakably happy for a moment, and Ivory felt that tug of longing in his belly again and wanted to swat at it with both hands.

“Great,” Raphael said as he pushed himself up into a lopsided sitting position. The book that had been lying face-down on his stomach slipped off and Ivory caught it reflexively before it hit the ground, thumb between the pages to mark the spot where Raphael had stopped, and Raphael made a pleased noise when he handed it back like that and cradled his book to his chest like it was something precious. “That’s great. I mean, I’d like it too. Should we, how about some tea?”

Ivory nodded, wanting nothing more than to kiss Raphael with a sudden, burning urge now that he definitely wasn’t allowed to anymore, but managed to have tea with Raphael and even a small conversation without getting angry at him that night, though he did go to bed feeling strangely bereft and even more exhausted than before. The next morning, he overslept, and showed up to class frazzled and tired, barely on time thanks to skipping breakfast in favour of a brief shower, but Raphael had saved him a seat and some toast wrapped in a napkin. At lunch, Raphael told him a long, involved story about one of his cats at home, which made Ivory laugh even though he also felt a little homesick, and when Adamo sent them all on a survival crash-course hiking up a snow-covered hill outside of Thremedon and pitching tents in the woods the next day, Raphael and Ivory paired up and managed to not only get their tent up faster than Amery and Niall, but also get a small fire going, over which Raphael proceeded to toast (and burn) a small bag of celebratory marshmallows that he’d bought at the market. They were gooey and messy and hot, and Ivory spent a while licking their sugary remains off his fingers, half-aware that Raphael was watching him a little strangely and half trying to discreetly suss out if Luvander was still terribly upset about his row with Niall.

He didn’t get a chance to talk to Luvander alone until a few days later, when they had the Sunday off and Ivory found him after breakfast, sitting on a windowsill just below Ivory’s favourite roof perch and staring moodily out across the grounds.

“So, which version of the story did you hear?” Luvander asked listlessly as Ivory leaned against the wall next to the window and poked at the pitiful little candle stub that squatted in a dusty saucer next to Luvander’s foot. “The one where we duel or the one where we end up making passionate love on the common room floor while Adamo watches?”

“Neither,” Ivory said, moulding wax around the tip of his index finger. “Just heard that it was shit.”

Luvander snorted. “Well, that at least is accurate.”

The candle flame danced under Ivory’s idle ministrations, its reflection in the window glass boring a red-hot little hole into the murky grey canvas of the training grounds outside.

“Are you okay?” Ivory finally gathered up enough words to ask. Luvander’s mouth twitched bitterly, and he let his forehead thunk against the windowpane with a sigh.

“Not really. But it’ll pass, it always does.”

Ivory flicked the dried wax from his fingers and frowned. “Amery asked me where you were at breakfast. I told him you’d gone into town.”

“Fuck,” Luvander said tiredly, still leaning against the window. “Thank you.”

“Well… Raphael says he really just wants to talk to you.”

“What could Amery possibly be wanting to talk to me about? Let me think… maybe the fact that I’m a big damn nelly and seduced his best _straight_ friend off the straight path of straightness with my wily ways? No fucking thanks.”

Ivory shrugged. “Or maybe you should just hear him out, instead of running away and hiding all the time. It’s a lot of effort, after all. I should know, seeing as that’s my go-to strategy as well when I’m not allowed to take a knife to any of my comrades,” he pointed out, surprised for a moment at his own frankness. Obviously being Raphael’s friend was doing wonders for his temper lately.

Luvander was silent for a bit, his eyes fixed on the grim weekend weather beyond the window pane, and his mouth pulled down in the corners in a sad little grimace. Limply, he grazed the back of one hand against the glass, knocking softly a couple of times, and then gave a short, pitiful sigh. “You and Raphael made up, then,” he observed, and Ivory recognised the strategy from his own repertoire as meaning the subject of Amery was closed.

“I suppose,” he admitted, and shifted around so he could perch on the windowsill next to the candle. “We’re not… it’s nothing like… well,” he shrugged again, shying off from saying _not like you and Niall_ , which was what he meant. “We’re friends,” he finished, a lame term which limped along behind his real feelings. “That’s all.”

“Good for you,” Luvander murmured, and somehow it was worse when he said it like that, like he meant it.

“You should come downstairs,” Ivory winced at his own counsel, knowing he’d ignore it if anybody was offering it to him in Luvander’s place - ignore it and set them on fire, probably. “Most of the others have gone into town, it’s just me and Raphael and Ace, really. I think Magoughin’s around somewhere, but,” he poked at the candle wax again, tiny finger-shaped divots in the gloop. “It’s warmer, anyway.”

“Amery?” Luvander checked in a small voice.

“Gone to meet his brother, I think.”

Luvander heaved a big sigh, pried his cheek off the window glass at last and fingered the candle out of Ivory’s greedy hands with a pointed look. “Fine. But if Raphael looks at me all sad and _pitying_ again, I’m stepping on his foot.”

“Fair enough,” Ivory shrugged, knowing that particular urge all too well himself.

~

“Visitor for Airman Luvander,” said the attendant who’d come looking for them about five minutes after Luvander had just moulded himself into the squishiest armchair in front of the common room fire and vowed to never get up again. Ace, Raphael and Magoughin were playing cards on a nearby table and Ivory had slunk off to play a soft little melody on the piano that reminded Luvander of snow and silk and fairy lights, and the lace curtains in his mother’s kitchen that fluttered in the breeze every time the front door opened.

“What,” Luvander groaned. The only person he was aware of who might visit him here was Holly, and she’d already told him she was on kitchen duty all weekend after some mischief she and Aria had gotten into. He entertained a few gruesome ideas about his father having tracked him down so he could drag him back home and whip the fanciful notions of city life out of him in the stables as he’d threatened on so many occasions, and tried very hard to come up with a plan of escape as he heaved himself out of the armchair to follow the attendant to the reception room. Maybe, if he made it to the Airman fast enough, he could sneak in and fly away on Yesfir’s back to some remote tropical island where they could live out the remainder of their lives…

The attendant pulled open the door for him, and for one heart-stopping moment, Luvander thought the woman standing at the window was his mother.

Then she turned around, and the stern figure and poise and dark hair gave way to much softer features that Luvander had last seen peering out of one of the upper windows of their house as he sneaked out under cover of dawn with a bag full of meagre belongings and a coat that had once belonged to his father.

“Rosie,” he said, caught utterly off-guard by an onslaught of bitter nostalgia as his favourite sister cried out and launched herself at him with less grace than befitted her many skirts and prim little hat.

“Luvander, you bastard,” she whispered, squeezing the life out of him with her small hands, “you promised to write, you swore you wouldn’t forget about me, how _could_ you?”

“Ah yes, that,” he sighed against her hair, “well, you see, I did say postcards and they don’t really sell those here. Rosie…” his sister smelled like honey and applewood with a hint of road dust from travelling, something like old leather and a tiny tang of farrier’s iron. Luvander dug his fingers in around her elbows and had to hold his breath, keep it sharp and tight in his chest as he was suffused with a wave of homesick nostalgia that he had never anticipated. He swallowed, thick and sonorous, and pressed a flat kiss against Rosie’s smooth temple. “How did you find me?” he whispered, and she swatted his sleeve with a gloved hand.

“Not particularly hard to find a member of the Dragon Corps, you idiot,” she sniffed. “How did that even happen, you ran off to join the foot soldiers, how did you end up here?”

“That’s a long and boring story,” Luvander insisted. It wasn’t actually long, but it would most likely be boring for Rose, full of military jargon and the less interesting reality of airman recruitment. Besides which, he wasn’t completely sure if some of the mechanical and training stories might be classified information. “Do you - did you come - I mean, who knows you’re here, how did you get away?”

“Well now,” Rose sniffed again and finally pulled back from their embrace, her hands still smoothing at his shirt front. Her gloves were silk, Luvander noticed, and looked new; a soft camel brown with delicate black buttons running up the outer wrists, disappearing under the demure lace trim at the cuffs of her dress. “I’m not just here to scold you about not writing to me. I’m getting married, actually.”

“You,” Luvander’s stomach clenched sideways, part delight and part distress. “You’re - not to - not - please not to Arnaud?”

Rosie snorted, and swatted him lightly again. “Honestly, you think Arnaud could afford these gloves? No, of course not. I wanted out of that dismal muddy existence just as much as you did, you know that. Found myself a city boy. Educated. Fancy. Perhaps you’d better not meet him, actually, you’re bound to fall desperately in love with him and I’m really too fond of him now to share.”

“Did it happen quickly?” Luvander asked her, suddenly desperate for a cheerful happy ending, a soppy love story like Rose used to make up for him when he was little and sick, the only time she’d consent to forgo her usual repertoire of ghastly vengeful ghost stories or fearsome lady warriors. “Please tell me it was love at first sight and he whisked you away like a princess, Rosie, tell me something good.”

His sister frowned up at him then, the whiplash of conker-brown curls trickling like pirouettes out from the edges of her little cranberry velvet hat - extremely stylish at the moment, Luvander knew, because he made a point of checking any time he went into town. Fashion was important in the city, unless you were a Margrave and could afford to be above such things, or a student who couldn’t afford anything at all. “Luv,” Rosie said softly, her eyes narrowing as she searched his face, “did something happen? Are you alright?”

“I - yes, I,” Luvander said, too quickly, and choked on the lie, which shuffled and rearranged itself in his mouth into a tiny wail of “noooo, I’m nooottttt.”

“Oh, you precious spoon,” Rosie sighed, bringing her hands up to cup his face and squish his cheeks a bit, rubbing her thumbs back and forth and shaking her head. “This is what comes of not writing to your big sister when we both know you’re a giant booby who can’t make good decisions without my help. Come on, then. You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.”

~

“Fucking fuck _fuck_ fuck fucking - fuck!”

Ivory startled awake from where he’d been ill-advisedly dozing against Raphael’s shoulder on the sofa. Raphael nearly dropped his cards, and Magoughin and Ace lowered theirs to blink at Luvander, who was, uncharacteristically, kicking the furniture and swearing at the top of his lungs.

“This is getting old,” Magoughin sighed after the seventeenth “fuck” (Ivory had counted) and reached out a hand to grab Luvander and stop him in his tracks. “What’s got your knickers in a twist, Airman? Didn’t you have a visitor?”

“Yes,” Luvander ground out, making a fist and punching the back of Magoughin’s armchair. “I did. My sister, she… fuck fuck fuck, anyway, I went to the kitchen for _five minutes_ to get us some tea and guess who was right there in the visitor’s lounge when I came back, when he had _no business whatsoever_ of being there, _flirting_ with my _about-to-be-married sister_?!”

“Uh-oh,” Ace muttered, studiously staring at his cards.

“ _Fucking Niall_ , that’s who!” Luvander roared, threw his hands up in the air and almost knocking Raphael’s reading glasses off his face in the process, then paced another circuit of the common room before stomping out again, still cursing under his breath.

“Oops,” Magoughin chuckled, picking his cards back up. “Fellas, I’m about to clean you all out, just a heads-up…”

Ace and Raphael also resumed playing, and Ivory manfully resisted the urge to straighten Raphael’s glasses for about two minutes before giving in just as Magoughin was distracted counting money and Ace had to dive under the table for a lost card. Raphael blinked at him, and Ivory flashed him a grin before deciding to get up and see if Luvander was alright.

~

Rosie had three options for him, and Luvander didn’t much like any of them. If he put it behind him and closed the door and moved on then it would be over, forever, for real - and while it was, no doubt, over forever for real, he wasn’t necessarily ready to admit that just yet. Doing so would feel like clinging on to the shame and self-doubt, guilt and sadness whilst tossing away all the remnants of the good bits. Her second suggestion was what she’d wanted to offer him before she’d realised he was an airman now, rather than a regular soldier: for him to come and live with her and her husband-to-be. She told Luvander he was a Margrave’s non-Talented assistant and earned good money, was worldly and liberal-minded and had no qualms about such an arrangement. Obviously, it was out of the question. Luvander had already been to Adamo’s office the very day after the awful scene in the common room, and been greeted with “if you’re here to try and resign again you can turn around and walk straight back through that door and put your uniform on, it’s not happening,” without Adamo even looking up from his paperwork. Luvander had turned around and gone straight back out to put his uniform on.

Rosie’s third suggestion was that Luvander try talking to Niall, but that was absolutely not going to happen, of course. Not only would talking to Niall have meant being in close proximity to him without the barrier of other people, meaning he’d be there with his face and his mouth and his figure-hugging trousers and, just, no… it would also mean talking about _things_ , all the things which Niall had shouted at him in front of everyone, which were horrible and - worse - true. Luvander was not up for that.

“I don’t know why I thought I could do this,” he told his sister sadly over tea and fruit cake, shredded anxiously to crumbs and uneaten. “He’s so much - they’re all so much more… they know things and they’ve been places and they understand stuff, Rose, and I’m just… I don’t have any of that. I can’t talk to him, I can’t even look at him, you saw what he looks like, dammit.”

“Just explain to him you grew up someplace where they still hunt people down for being cindy,” Rosie couldn’t see the problem. “It’s not unusual. Thremedon’s the only place, really, which isn’t backwards-thinking like that, you can’t tell me all the others are from the city. As for the matter of his face, that’s your trauma,” she shrugged. “I’ll grant you it’s a nice one, though slightly marred for me now I know where it’s been,” she added with a smirk around her teacup.

Luvander didn’t even rise to the bait. He slumped back in his chair and looked across out the window at the bitter wind which was crystallizing the remains of the snowstorm into treacherous ice. There hadn’t been any more snow yet, but Ghislain said it wouldn’t be long. “Why did I have to pick someone so outrageous,” he sighed. “All those men, Rosie, and I had to go and fall for that one. The monstrous heart-breaker who doesn’t understand about personal privacy.”

Rosie leaned over and placed her still-gloved hand over the top of his, soothingly. “I’m sure you’re all heart-breakers, sweetie,” she told him. “But as to the rest, you always did have terrible taste. If you’d written home to me that there was a man in your camp who cared nothing for wandering corridors naked and sneaking into showers with you I could have written back right away and told you that he sounded just your type and to leave well alone.”

“Ugh,” Luvander put both hands over his face and groaned, “yes, _fine_ , I know, I should have written to you, I’m sorry.”

Rosie grinned and then, to Luvander’s grateful relief, changed the topic to which of the city sights she hadn’t been to see yet and the wedding dress she had picked out against their mother’s express wishes. She was gleefully describing its ample cleavage when there was a knock on the door, and when Luvander called out a wary “yes?” Ivory stuck his head in, looking around cautiously.

“Ah,” he said and nodded at Rose. “I just wanted to check if you were…”

“Right,” Luvander said, “thank you very kindly. Rose, this is Airman Ivory, he plays piano and has a penchant for fire and knives.”

“Pleasure,” Rose said drily, giving a little salute. “Good to see my little brother is finally making friends.”

“Rosie!”

She stuck her tongue out at him, and all at once she wasn’t a grown-up lady in expensive frippery about to get married to a gentleman anymore; she was the lanky, sun-burnt girl with pigtails who made Luvander sneeze by throwing hay at him and tickled him until he screamed. He swallowed hard and looked away. “Home” was an illusion made up of distorted memories, like looking through stained-glass windows and thinking the landscape outside was actually pink and orange. As far as Luvander was concerned, he never wanted to go back there in his life.

“It’s almost time for dinner,” Ivory informed him briskly before taking his leave. “Niall’s in the showers and Amery got back a few minutes ago, just so you know.”

Then he closed the door behind him and Luvander took a deep breath.

“Rosie,” he said, “how would you like it if I took you out to dinner tonight?”

~

Ivory had another letter from Maxwell.

This one was shorter, just a page in Max’s spiky, bold hand. The parchment smelt like bonfires and pickled ginger, and Ivory held it to his face for a long moment, breathing in winter at home and allowing himself to miss the familiarity of jars of Sebastian’s endless jam lining the pantry shelves and the way the cats would shake dirty rain from their cold feet as they leaped down from the kitchen windowsill after coming in.

He was immensely pleased with himself when he found he could actually make out enough words in his brother’s letter to be able to read the gist of it. Its arrival had worried him initially, because Max didn’t know Raphael was still teaching him to read, and now that they knew he could receive visitors it was far more in both his brothers’ style to show up unannounced and weave disaster all over the order Ivory had tried to place on his life. Also, the abrupt length of the letter made him fret, after that other five-pager.

However, it seemed to primarily be nonsense about the early snows and something about carrots, with what appeared to be a little anecdote about Sebastian and an incident with a goat. Ivory smiled, traced the letters of his own name with one finger and then those of Maxwell’s at the bottom of the note, and Sebastian’s, halfway through. There were plenty of words there he didn’t recognise and, knowing Max, probably some he would never have heard before anyway, possibly even made up. It made Ivory feel calm and loose in his limbs, though, to know that there were words here, a piece of his home, and he could keep it all to himself if he wanted to, and practice making the sounds of the letters together in their little word-shape collections, the way Raphael had shown him, until he knew them all. It was more exciting to him as a piece of reading matter than books - although he would never have told Raphael that.

There was one section of the letter which he struggled to make anything from at all, beyond a few linking words like ‘and’ and ‘but’ and, twice, ‘dragon’. It worried him. No doubt it was some sly Maxwellian snark about whatever rumours there were in the market about airmen and how his little brother was bringing the family name into disrepute, or something equally silly, but nonetheless, it bothered Ivory to not _know_. Consequently, when Raphael came into the dorm and found Ivory propped against his pillows in a corner of his top bunk, a blanket over his knees and the letter crunched urgently between his fingers, a tiny frown puckering between his eyebrows, Ivory squinted at him and decided that, this time, it would be silly not to ask. He knew what Raphael’s name looked like written down, had made a point of learning the names of all his fellow airmen in case of emergencies, and Max wasn’t making any of his crude remarks about the other man, so it was about as safe as it could be, given that it was still Max.

“Another letter from my brother,” he told Raphael, “I think - there’s just one bit I couldn’t - help?”

“You read the rest?” Raphael sounded indescribably delighted as he hopped up into Ivory’s bunk and narrowly missed braining himself on the ceiling. Ivory’s toes curled against the mattress at the look of joy on his face, and knew instinctively that telling Raphael he’d read the letter, even if he hadn’t wanted help with this last bit, had been a good choice. He looked like a child experiencing Midwinter lights and tasting gingerbread for the first time. “That’s brilliant,” he was gushing, “I’m - yes, sorry, well done us though, I mean, right? Are you pleased?”

Ivory’s lips burst themselves into a little bubble of a laugh before he could stop them, Raphael’s glee was enchanting. He shuffled closer to the wall to make space on the narrow bed and nodded. Raphael squeezed up next to him and Ivory felt his own heartbeat shiver at the warmth and weight of Raphael at his shoulder, a cosy bulwark of friendship bundled up against the early December chill. “There’s just, this bit,” he smoothed the letter out against their bent knees and pointed. “The rest of it I can… I don’t have all the words exactly, but, I could understand, anyway.”

“Brilliant,” Raphael breathed again, sounding reverent and content. He leaned his head forward, curls catching with Ivory’s own mess of blond hair, which needed cutting, but he hated strangers touching any part of his body, much less _doing things_ to it, so he’d been ignoring it. Perhaps if the war hadn’t heated up again they’d have some leave at Midwinter and he could ask Sebastian like usual. Raphael’s temple pressed against his as he bent over the letter and frowned, Ivory’s finger still indicating the sentences he couldn’t manage.

“It says _I’ve been hearing some nasty rumours about the Ke’Han recently,_ ” Raphael read, and pointed at a strange squiggle in Maxwell’s ink. “That’s Ke’Han, at least I’m pretty sure, it’s actually _in_ Ke’Han I think - I didn’t know your brother knew the language.”

“Neither did I,” Ivory rolled his eyes. “I doubt he does, actually, he’s just about pretentious enough to be one of those wankers who writes the name of the country in its own language though, even if it’s the only word he knows of it.”

“Huh,” Raphael grinned, Ivory felt his face move. “Well, then. No wonder you couldn’t make that out. _I’ve been hearing some nasty rumours about the Ke’Han recently, apparently they’ve been working on some counter magic to target our dragons - your dragons - let’s hope it’s all unfounded garbage, but I thought you should know. I overheard something in the pub about weather magic and other sorcery. Be careful, cub._ ” Raphael pressed his lips together at the end. “That’s all,” he finished quietly.

“Thank you.”

Ivory felt a bit sick at the thought of anything targeting Cassiopeia, then firmly told himself that she was a gods-damned fire-breathing metal dragon with a mercurial temper and nothing could fuck with her. They’d made it through a snow storm last week that even Ghislain had acknowledged with an impressed nod. She was going to be _fine_.

“Maybe we should tell the chief,” Raphael mused, chewing lightly on the pad of his thumb and handing the letter back, without, Ivory noted, so much as scanning the rest. Ivory was oddly pleased about this and put his head on Raphael’s shoulder with a sigh.

“He probably already knows, but yes, we can talk to him tomorrow.”

“You okay?” Raphael asked, awkwardly ducking down to look at Ivory’s face. He did this a lot when he checked on him, and Ivory was starting to suspect that Raphael could read his facial expressions just as well as letters and words and sometimes made a point of turning away when he was feeling petty about that. So far, though, Raphael had never used this ability against him; rather, he did it sub-consciously when he wasn’t sure if Ivory was in the mood for, well, _Raphael_ , or wanted to be left alone.

“Hmm,” Ivory said. “You?”

“You know me,” Raphael shrugged, his voice light in a way that Ivory could tell was fake, “I’m always okay.”

“No one is always okay,” Ivory carefully pointed out.

“Hm, yes,” Raphael conceded. “I am, though. Right now. Natalia told me a joke today that she picked up from one of the handlers…”

“Not the one about the Wildgrave and the Margrave?” Ivory groaned.

“Damn, you heard that one already,” Raphael sighed, then giggled a little to himself. “You have to admit it’s a good one, though.

“I don’t have to admit anything,” Ivory said, and in a fit of self-awareness added, “in fact, that’s my prime strategy for dealing with my brothers: never admit to anything. If you keep a straight face long enough, they’ll grow bored and go away.”

“Now I’m curious,” Raphael said, shifting a little on the bed until Ivory was leaning more comfortably against him, “what sordid things did your brothers accuse you of that you couldn’t admit to?”

“ _Didn’t_ admit to, there’s a difference,” Ivory grinned. “I shan’t tell.”

“Nooo, come on, tell me. Pretty please?”

“Nope.”

“Just one tiny thing?”

“Oh, alright then,” Ivory purred, languidly stretching his legs and resettling his head on Raphael’s shoulder. “I used to eat all the strawberries in the garden when they were out for market day. I did this every year but they never caught me at it, so at some point they blamed one of the cats because there’d been paw prints in the strawberry patch.”

It was nice, the way Raphael’s body vibrated under Ivory’s cheek as he laughed. Ivory let himself laugh along a little bit, remembering sun-warmed strawberries and Maxwell’s outraged face and the fluffy white cat that had been Seb’s favourite until he caught her rolling around in the empty patch.

“I can’t believe Amery and Niall genuinely believed you’d been a contract killer in the Esarina’s employ before you came here, when the shocking reality is that you were a cold-blooded strawberry thief who framed a poor house-cat for his heinous crimes.”

“One of my finer moments,” Ivory grinned. Raphael hiccuped a last little laugh, and just like that, Ivory wanted to kiss him again.

He didn’t, because he’d made that decision and perhaps it had been a bad one, but he didn’t know how to undo it now. Raphael’s shoulder was broad and comfortable, and his shirt smelled clean and warm. Ivory turned his face slightly, pressing the side of his nose subtly against the fabric and breathing in: evergreen and honey. He closed his eyes and allowed himself a dangerous tiny second of daydreaming about kissing Raphael again, which was ruined forever when Raphael said “are you smelling me?” in a wry, amused voice like dry firewood.

“Nooo,” Ivory whispered, and breathed in again.

“You definitely are,” Raphael sounded smug now, and his fingers were suddenly in Ivory’s hair, combing through the waves that had started to trickle behind his ears. Ivory sighed and nudged his head closer to Raphael’s shoulder without thinking about it. “What do I smell like?”

“Mmtrees,” Ivory murmured, and pressed his nose closer again. Raphael’s shirt was warm, cosy flannel, worn thin with wear and soft as rabbit skin. “Paper. Smudgy… sweet. Nothing,” he frowned, abruptly realising what he was saying and feeling his stomach tie itself in one of Ghislain’s sailor knots: sturdy and fierce and uncomfortable. He wrenched his face away from Raphael’s shoulder, although there was hardly anywhere to go, squashed into his bunk. “Nothing, you don’t - I’m not - nothing. Salad.”

“Salad?” Raphael peered down at him with an abysmally attractive quirk to his lips and one eyebrow giving Jeannot a run for his money. His fingers were still tangled in Ivory’s hair. “How’s that?”

“Nothing,” Ivory shook his head.

“Really,” Raphael’s smirk broadened, and fuck, Ivory felt that right in his pants.

“I can’t - I don’t want to - no,” he shook his head again, minute movement stemming from his own frustration at himself. “I don’t want to kiss you again,” he whispered, angrily, feeling his face turn excruciatingly pink.

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?” Raphael asked, his own face mirroring Ivory’s in a tragic little frown of confusion. Ivory couldn’t quite stop himself from reaching up with his fingers and pressing them softly to Raphael’s forehead, smoothing that away. Raphael’s eyes fluttered closed and his lips parted a fraction and then Ivory was kissing him anyway, fuck everything, and Raphael’s mouth was warm and sweet and perfect all over again.

It didn’t last. Raphael’s hands found Ivory’s shoulders and pushed, firm but not aggressive, but when Ivory’s body gave in and shivered backwards, limp and ragged and responsive, he didn’t let go. Eyes still half-closed and lips already looking stung, he kept their foreheads pressed together and his hands on Ivory’s shoulders so he couldn’t escape, and whispered “I just - I don’t, I don’t understand what you want with me, I just really like you,” and paused, cheeks pinking; swallowed something heavy and exhausting. “I’m sorry,” he added, sadly. “I’m sorry.”

Ivory took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then exhaled again very, very slowly, like letting dragon smoke curl out of his lungs.

“I like you, too,” he whispered, and: “can I kiss you again.”

Raphael’s eyes opened, but remained unfocused and fuzzy-soft, heavy with hope. His fingers smoothed over Ivory’s collar and brushed the edges of his collarbone and Ivory shivered. His own hands had both twisted into Raphael’s shirt, holding on tight, and Raphael let go of him to take them into his own, shaping his broad palms over Ivory’s spiky knuckles and cradling them gently.

“Yes,” he murmured, nuzzling his nose against Ivory’s, “but can you not go back to hating me after?”

“Mm,” Ivory said, and kissed him again.

They didn’t stop for a long time after this.

 


	14. Lesson Fourteen: Truth Or Get The Fuck Out

“Gotcha.”

Luvander could, technically, have been unhappier about Amery finally managing to catch him alone and immediately snaking an overly-friendly arm around his shoulders and hauling him up against his side - turned out his shirt was just as shiny as his fucking hair, gods damn it. He _could_ have been unhappier, he told himself, if - say - they had also been on fire. Or if he’d been naked in the dark. Or if it had been Niall instead of Amery, or both of them, that would have been worse. He _could_ have been unhappier, in an extremely unhappy situation like one of those, but as it stood - he was still pretty fucking displeased about it.

“Must you,” he sighed, and tried vaguely to shuffle Amery off, a half-hearted endeavour because he knew, realistically, that it was also a fruitless one.

“I must,” Amery said cheerfully, “I really must. I’ve been looking for you, my friend. Didn’t you hear?”

“Oh, no, I heard,” Luvander told him earnestly.

“Huh,” Amery let the slight graze off his shoulders without comment. “Well, here’s the thing. Just a tiny thing, really, I--”

“Amery, I really couldn’t give less of a damn about your tiny thing,” Luvander sighed wearily. “Can you just fuck off? I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Tough balls,” Amery sang, “because I want to talk to you, and also you’ve been avoiding everyone except Ivory since you and Niall had your little - nah-ah, don’t go all stiff and awkward and stupid on me, I don’t care, you know? That’s the thing. That’s the point. No one cares?”

“Great. No one cares. Thanks. Is that - I don’t know, what, that’s meant to make me feel better? Because you might want to work on your strategy there, Vallet.”

“ _Gods_ , you’re annoying,” Amery exploded in a huff of rounded vowels and polished pronunciation that made Luvander resent him even more. As if it wasn’t enough that he had perfect hair and a charming smile and Niall’s friendship without having to angst about the boners, he had to be posh as well, the bastard. “Will you just listen? No one cares about your pillow biting, alright? Or Niall’s, whichever way you do it, whatever, no one cares. You see? It’s not a thing, no one gives a shit who you want to sleep with, what we’re fucking pissed about is you being a miserable git. No one cares about the thing you think we’re all bothered about, i.e. you being cindy, and we are all bothered about the thing you think none of us care about, by which I mean you. Get it?”

“You’re not bothered about me,” Luvander spat, hunching up his shoulders and wishing Amery would just be a little bit further away, just about far enough for Luvander to punch him in his perfect teeth, that would be great. “You don’t even like me.”

Amery shrugged, and the motion pinched Luvander’s shoulder blades and he hated him even more, an angry bubble of boiling discontent and built-up misery nesting under the cavity of his chest. “No, I suppose I don’t, much,” Amery was saying, horribly reasonable. “But there’s a big fat difference between not liking a person and not caring about them. And there’s another one between not liking a person and giving a rat’s arse who they prefer fucking. You know?”

“No, I don’t know,” Luvander ground out.

“See, now you’re just being deliberately obtuse,” Amery let him go suddenly, swinging himself away and giving Luvander a little shove in the shoulder so he stumbled backward. “Just stop it, alright? Stop slinking around thinking we all hate you and making this drama about something it doesn’t need to be over, how about that? Because I tell you what, doing all that slinking and sadding and feeling sorry for yourself, being fucking precious the way you are, _that’s_ what’s going to make people start caring the wrong way and not wanting you around. Mate,” he tacked on the end, brushing some imaginary speck of something off Luvander’s shoulder with the flat of one hand in a gesture that was probably meant to be _matey,_ whatever that meant. He looked like he’d just remembered something; pulling his face around a few circuits of _oh fuck_ and _gods damn it_ and _oops._ “Sorry,” he tried again, gracious as the Esar giving pardon, and Luvander’s dislike boiled over and hissed in the back of his throat.

“No, you’re not,” he sighed, suddenly overwhelmed and too tired to deal with any of this. “Look, thanks, I think? For the… whatever… that was… but just, do me a favour and don’t talk to me again.”

Amery shrugged again, and took a few steps backward, spreading his arms out wide and then dropping them hopelessly at his sides again. “Whatever,” he agreed. “Your loss. I tried.”

~

“I have good news and bad news,” Chief Sergeant Adamo announced on a drippy Monday morning the week before Midwinter. They’d just come in from their morning run, which had been cut short after Raphael, Ace and Luvander had all slipped on a patch of ice and nearly broken their necks in relatively quick succession, and they were all looking rather bedraggled and blue around the lips even after a hot shower and some breakfast. Ivory sat rather sourly in a corner with a bacon sandwich he’d meant to give to Raphael, who was limping again after his fall and had missed most of breakfast, but then Ivory’d seen him leaning heavily on Amery on his way to the classroom and had suddenly stopped feeling sympathetic. It wasn’t fair to punish Raphael for this, of course, but Amery had also brought sandwiches (which, Ivory noted bitterly, looked a lot more appealing than the sad limp toast triangle he was cradling in a greasy napkin), and since Raphael hadn’t seen fit to join Ivory where he’d saved a seat for him, Ivory figured he was well within his rights as Raphael’s - whatever they were - _kissing partner_ sounded so stupid - to eat that damn bacon sandwich himself and sulk just a _little_ bit.

“The bad news is, you lot are gonna have to make your own food from now on,” Adamo continued, then waited until the indignant shouts and loud booing had died down to add: “The good news is, we’re finally moving into the Airman.”

Ivory couldn’t help catching Raphael’s eye then, because even when he was sulking, he was _always_ checking for the other man, it had become something like a nervous tic and it was incredibly annoying, but he didn’t know how to stop. Under cover of the chorus of excitable cheering and high-fives being exchanged, Raphael shot him a wink which made Ivory feel simultaneously electrifyingly aroused and full of absolute horrified trepidation.

There were separate bedrooms in the Airman. _Separate. Bedrooms._ With doors. Possibly even _doors that locked_. Which, on the one hand, was an excellent thing, because it meant Ivory could just lock himself in his room any time he felt like it and never ever come out again ever, but it would also mean that _technically_ , one could lock themselves in a bedroom _with another person_ and no one would be able to walk in on them and interrupt _things_. Ivory didn’t want to do _things_. Or, well, he did, in an abstract sort of way, but since the reality would probably be more like Raphael attempting to do _things_ while Ivory had no idea what the fuck he was doing and humiliated himself with his weird spiky issues and his traitorous body and his inexperience. He would rather have preferred to just stick with the kissing and the snuggling, which was something he apparently wasn’t hideously bad at judging by the fact that Raphael still wanted to do it.

Also, that wink. What did that wink mean. Did that wink mean that Raphael definitely wanted to do _things_? Was that what that meant? Did it mean he was actively thinking about _things_ , was he plotting, was he going to start… trying… what would happen, Ivory’s mind darted, panicking, what would happen if Raphael put his hand in Ivory’s pants? Oh, gods. Oh, no, that wasn’t - that was not a safe thing to be thinking about in a room full of crowded airmen, that was… that was not going to happen, even if it hypothetically might be pleasant, it wasn’t going to happen because Raphael didn’t want them to ever be like Niall and Luvander, he’d said so, hadn’t he? And when they got their separate, potentially lockable rooms, Ivory would just have to make sure that they were never alone in one, never locked in together, never in a situation where they were at risk of _things_ occurring. Yes. Good. Done.

He missed the rest of Chief Adamo’s talk.

~

The Airman was a cold, unwelcoming slab of concrete from the outside, completely at odds with the rest of surrounding Miranda. Their individual bedrooms were arranged around a common room which featured some boring sofas and a coffee table; a small kitchen with basic equipment and a table. “Whoever designed this joint can’t count,” Magoughin frowned, spinning one of the kitchen chairs. “There’s only eight seats in here.”

“I think the idea is to not have all of us in here at any one time,” Ghislain said easily, inspecting the empty cupboards. “They probably saw what the mess hall looks like on a Sunday morning when you all roll in with your vile hangovers and throw food and insults everywhere.”

“Like you’re never part of that,” Magoughin raised an eyebrow at him.

“‘Course not,” Ghislain grinned. “I’m very superior, hadn’t you noticed?”

The rules were simple. They could decorate their bedrooms however they so chose, but nobody would be coming in to clean them. There was a rota for cleaning in the communal areas and anyone caught slacking off would be put on dog rations for a week. Adamo’s command room was off-limits unless they were summoned into it, and while they could visit their dragons anytime they saw fit, anyone caught abusing the trap door system set up for raids would be in serious trouble. So long as they weren’t going out to fight, they could take the long way round. “Everything else is fair game,” Adamo told them, scowling, “so play nice.”

That night, there was a party.

Somehow, two crates of wine made it to the common room, rows of dusty, unlabelled bottles filled to the brim with a thick, gooey concoction more black than red. Ghislain, Magoughin and Raphael had ostensibly gone to the market that morning after pooling some money to get food, though as far as Luvander could see, the only things that had newly filled the empty shelves in the kitchen were boxes of coffee and tea, some rum, and the usual rations of milk, eggs, meat and bread that would be delivered directly to the Airman twice each week. And then, of course, there was this wine, whose origins remained mysteriously unclear and which was in all probability highly inadvisable and potentially dangerous to drink, so of course it was instantly decreed that every single airman had to have at least one glass of it, as a way of christening their new home.

Luvander, who wasn’t actually used to much alcohol, nearly choked as the first sip seared its way down his throat, but then the second suddenly tasted a lot less like dragon oil and more like nice-smelling shoe polish, and the third was very close to a vague essence of grapes, so he kept drinking it while Amery and Jeannot set up a brand new dart board someone had procured from somewhere, Ace made sure the ten decks of cards they’d brought from the barracks were complete and hadn’t been tampered with while possibly tampering with them himself, and Ivory fiddled happily with the piano he had somehow managed to convince Adamo to have delivered from their old common room.

“Right!” Amery announced as the first dart zoomed past him, narrowly missing his nose, “that’s that done. Now all that’s missing is a decorative bunch of girls in stockings.”

“How about we put you in some stockings and string you up with some fairy lights,” Ghislain suggested on his way past with the rum in one hand and a slightly tipsy Raphael collared with the other. “Mags, my man, what time is it?”

Magoughin made a show of pinging his dart against his wine glass to get everyone’s attention before announcing: “Time for booze and sordid truths! Grab a cushion and form a circle lads, we’re playing Truth Or Get The Fuck Out.”

“I thought we were gonna do Spin The Ace,” Compagnon giggled, flopping down on the ground next to Magoughin and topping up both of their glasses with the rest of a bottle.

“Aye, we were,” Ghislain said on Magoughin’s other side, still holding Raphael in something that looked like a headlock to Luvander, though Raphael was seemingly enjoying it and kept mumbling random snatches of poetry into Ghislain’s arm. “But Ace is out of commission for now.”

He pointed over to one of the sofas, where Ace was peacefully sprawled out with an empty glass clutched to his chest, looking calmer than he did even in sleep. Apparently alcohol had that effect on him. Luvander was about to take another sip of his wine when he noticed that his glass was actually empty, so he slid off his perch on an armchair, loose-limbed and sleepy, with the vague hope that he could get some more wine and maybe also slink out unnoticed before this horrible idea of a drinking game took hold, but Jeannot almost instantly slotted into place with a bottle in hand, blocking his escape route as if he’d been reading his mind, and then Compagnon’s hand found the back of Luvander’s shirt and pulled him down next to him.

Well, Luvander figured, at least he had wine and a cushion to sit on.

“Ace!” Ghislain boomed as a beginning when everyone was as assembled as their various states of inebriation would allow. Evariste and Merritt were draped like cats across one of the long couches, and Amery had flumped himself down on the floor with his head resting against the side of Ace’s butt. Jeannot had somehow wriggled himself in between Magoughin’s legs and Luvander was just thinking idly about reaching out and playing with his hair, because it did look unacceptably good tonight. Ivory was still at his piano, stroking it happily with the top down, looking as proud as Yesfir did when they pulled out of a dive three times quicker than the heavier dragons. Ace waved one hand languidly through the air in Ghislain’s general direction. “Truth or get the fuck out?” Ghislain asked him.

“Nah, man,” Ace hummed serenely, “I’m the fuck out already.”

“Fair and true,” Ghislain grinned, “Mags, shall we show these newbs how it’s done?”

“Hit me,” Magoughin smirked back, raising his glass of wine in salute.

“Truth or get the fuck out?” Ghislain repeated.

Magoughin closed his eyes for a holy reverent moment, and then said “truth,” very solemnly.

“Good lad,” Ghislain nodded. “Is it, or is it not the truth, that you once made our dear Compagnon laugh so much he wet himself?”

“Well now,” Magoughin cleared his throat and looked serious, as Compagnon started giggling with his head still on Magoughin’s shoulder. “I could answer that, but I feel like it might break some rules, isn’t that a question for Comps himself?”

“Wait, there are _rules_ ,” Niall whined from somewhere alarmingly close to Luvander, which made him clutch one hand across his belly and take an uncomfortably large gulp of his wine. It didn’t taste so bad any more but it still burned all the way down and made the room seem fuzzy at the edges, like he wanted to blink away sleep from his eyes, only closing them felt so nice that he decided to keep them that way. Actually, with his eyes shut he couldn’t see Niall, and that didn’t seem as bad. “Rules are,” Niall was complaining from somewhere near his right shoulder, “rules … boring, rules are boring, let’s just play the game, fuck the rules. Heyyy,” he whisper-sang then, all hot breath right up on Luvander’s ear, stumbling into his space with a stagger and a giggle. “I’m gonna… I’m just gonna… Luv, hey, Luv, I’m gonna, can I… put my, can I put my head here.” It wasn’t really a question, because his head was already in Luvander’s lap as he said it. Luvander wanted to protest because there was a reason this wasn’t okay, except he couldn’t remember it fully, and Niall’s head was heavy but not too heavy, and his own head felt pleasantly light and a bit like he was flying with Yesfir except for no soot or cold wind and he didn’t have to think about holding on.

“Mmmokay,” he agreed, “yes, good.”

“Yes, good,” Niall echoed, distant and sleepy and warm.

“Truth or get the fuck out then, fuck-the-rules Niall,” Magoughin’s grin was audible on Luvander’s other side, and he didn’t need to open his eyes to see the way he was stretched out with his legs long and easy in front of him, back against the armchair that Ghislain had arranged Raphael in. This was turning into a cosy little pile-up, he thought drowsily, feeling warm like he’d swallowed a spoonful of honey and melted butter, caramelised and gooey, delight simmering under his skin. A hand fidgeted around, flailing a bit at his chest before it found his own still cradling his stomach and slid their palms together: Niall’s hand, Luvander recognised it, and that was nice, he’d missed that, missed those fingers. He sighed, easily, slipping into a lacey sort of contentment, dulled senses and warm bodies and no rules.

“Truth, then,” Niall slurred.

“Did you and Luvander actually have sex in the chief’s office?” Magoughin asked then, and before Luvander had really even worked out the order of his words and what they meant Niall was chuckling in his lap, rich and fruity and entirely incriminating.

“You bet your sweet wine-drenched arse we did,” he laughed, and shifted a bit in Luvander’s lap, dancing their fingers around together like a digital tango.

“Fucking _helllllll_ ,” Jeannot whimpered, “I want to high five that so hard but it means moving. How did you get away with that, you jammy fucking bastards?”

“Niall,” Luvander whispered desperately, “that was a - you weren’t supposed to - nooo.”

“No, no, no, no,” Niall shook his head lazily where it was in Luvander’s lap, sighing and pouting, Luvander was fairly sure from the sound of his voice. “Don’t start that, don’t be, don’t… be proud, babe, be, fucking, be, don’t be weird again, please. This is a new house.”

And Luvander, drunk as he was, suddenly couldn’t find a fault in this argument, and so remained silent.

“Right!” Niall announced, newly invigorated by this, and proceeded to point a finger at each airman in turn while squinting and trying to decide who should go next. “I want sexy and disastrous first time stories. Raphael!”

Raphael giggled, still lounging in his armchair with his feet hanging over the armrest and propped against Ghislain’s shoulder, his hands around a half-empty wine glass. Luvander caught up Niall’s still pointing index finger and cradled his hand back against his stomach, where it twitched once and stilled.

“Girl in m’village,” Raphael mumbled reverently and toasted an imaginary person with his wine. “When I was fifteen. She was sweet on me, I was sweet on her, my parents had a hayloft… m’not naming names - details, I mean - gentleman doesn’t lick and tell - I mean _kiss_ \- haha - mm she was very… very lickable, though. I mean kissable. S’nice. Kissing. So nice.”

Niall whistled and drained Luvander’s wineglass as the other airmen banged their glasses on the floor in appreciation at this story. Raphael stared dreamily at the ceiling, and if there was a small dissonant jumble of notes issuing from the piano in the corner, that was probably just because it had yet to be properly tuned after the move. After Ghislain snapped him out of his reverie, Raphael asked Amery what he put in his hair to make it so shiny, and Luvander was just about to doze off with his fingers in Niall’s hair when Amery called out his name. Luvander glumly braced himself for another intrusive question about his and Niall’s relationship, but what Amery demanded instead was another first time story, and abruptly, Luvander’s mouth went very dry.

“Stables,” he blurted out, trying to calm the part of his brain that was wildly flailing at him to shut up, “there was… hay, I mean it wasn’t a hayloft, but, and a… I was fifteen. Sixteen. Well, seventeen, really. Haha. Late bloomer and all that. There was a horse that kept watching us… hahaha.”

He couldn’t stop laughing, even though no one joined in and his chest was hurting and his throat constricting like he was about to cry. He didn’t want to talk about Matthew. He wanted to talk about Niall even less, but the urge was suddenly overwhelming, worse than when he’d found his oldest sister Poppy kissing one of the Arlemagne exchange students behind the barn and Poppy had made him swear three times not to tell anyone while twisting his ear until he cried.

“Ghislain,” Luvander whispered, tired now of this game and of everything, “where the fuck did you get that wine.”

“Imported,” Ghislain said cheerfully, “say what you want about the Ke’Han but they sure know what to do with a bunch of grapes.”

“Like t’do something with your bunch of grapes,” Niall mumbled with his face turned full into Luvander’s stomach so - hopefully - no one else heard that, words swallowed by the smooth wool of his jumper.

The game continued, and Luvander drifted wearily in and out as the hour grew later and the confessions more sordid: first times, last times, worst times. Ivory said he was going to answer in piano and if nobody could translate it wasn’t his fault they were all musically challenged, when Jeannot wanted to know how many people he’d killed. He played something tinkly and pretty, which got a round of solemn applause from various scattered airmen, and a bit later when Evariste asked if he’d ever fucked anyone on the piano, Ivory hammered out an angry little chorus which plainly spoke _I would never abuse the love of my life like that_. “Fair enough,” Evariste agreed, and then announced that Merritt had fallen asleep “which is a bloody good thing although his snoring is as fucking irritating as his fidgeting so maybe not.”

“Truth or get the fuck out, Raphael,” Amery sang, now lying flat on the floor and waving his fingers in the air like he was conducting whatever Ivory was twirling with up in the high keys, even though it was technically Ivory’s turn. They were, after all, fucking the rules. “If you had to take any one of us to your brand new bedroom just for you and get licking like you’re back in that hayloft, who would you pick?”

“Haha,” Raphael giggled, and Ivory’s tinkly pink top notes stopped, tiny bells ringing themselves out. Luvander rearranged his fingers with Niall’s and received a nudge of Niall’s nose against his navel in return, a tiny purr and what felt like a smile. “Mmm,” Raphael was humming cheerfully, and he wriggled again in his armchair. “Wow, that’s… but… you’re all so… Amy, I can’t hurt anyone’s feelings like that, we are brothers in arms, right, we can all be… you can… be in my arms.”

“Ivory would kill me,” Amery declared, and a single, middle C rang out from the piano, calm and deadly. Luvander wasn’t sure whether that was a threat or an agreement.

“Yes,” Raphael was definitely in agreement. “Mm, yep. Which would be - would be - good for everyone, don’t you think? Service. I’ll take that, I’ll take that one for the team, you guys can thank me later.”

This met with a collected buzz of weak laughter, nobody much having the energy left for anything truly enthusiastic. Luvander had no idea what time it was. Ace, Merritt and Compagnon were asleep. Ghislain alone seemed still halfway sober, although how much alcohol would be required to bring his massive frame down like a mere mortal Luvander couldn’t even begin to fathom. And when Niall sleepily asked him “truth or get the fuck out, Ghislain, I hope you’re going to carry all of us to bed and tuck us in like babies,” Ghislain only rumbled his weather warning of a laugh.

“Not my fault you’re all lightweights,” he said sombrely. “But on that note, maybe it is time for bed. Pretty sure chief wants us all reporting for duty in about four hours.”

The next thing Luvander was aware of was the chief wanting them all reporting for duty, four hours later.

~

“Sooo,” Raphael said two days later, leaning against the door frame of Ivory’s room, just out of the shower and looking smugly fresh and cosy in clean clothes with his hair still damp. Most of the others were getting ready to go into town, and Ivory had made the mistake of leaving his door open for a minute when he’d gone to fetch some sheet music Maxwell and Sebastian had sent him, because he wanted to make use of an empty common room by practising a few more complex pieces without the looming threat of a dart being thrown his way if he played the same melody too many times in a row. “I mean I know I’m not exactly getting underneath you every night anymore, but am I still allowed in?”

Ivory promptly dropped his sheet music and had to crouch on the floor to gather up the pages and get them in the right order again. It was highly undignified, and he felt wrong-footed and tired besides, since they’d had their first night flying lessons the night before and his body was still adjusting to the turnaround in his sleep rhythm.

“I thought you were going out with the others,” Ivory said when he couldn’t feasibly stall any longer, and Raphael shrugged, still attractively draped along the door frame.

“I was, but then I realised that no one was going to make a mess in the kitchen tonight, so I kind of want to make use of that rare occurrence and cook something for myself for once. You can join me if you like.”

“Okay,” Ivory found himself saying before his brain caught up with his mouth, because he did want dinner and the only other alternative was cereal or a sandwich, both of which he’d seen entirely too much of in the last few days.

“Right,” Raphael said, grinning, “it’s a date, then.”

He winked and stepped aside to let Ivory pass, who had his sheet music protectively clutched to his chest and tried in vain to calm the somersaulting nerve endings in his stomach. After all, it wasn’t _really_ a date - not everyone was going out tonight, and it was perfectly normal for someone to share a meal they’d cooked with some of the other airmen if they so chose, even if said meal wasn’t a front for some vile prank. Raphael was probably going to ask whomever stayed behind if they wanted to join in now that Ivory had said yes anyway. There was really no use getting worked up about anything.

Ivory took a deep breath and closed his door behind him, waiting until Raphael had disappeared to have a chat with Amery before crossing the corridor to the common room, which was right opposite his door. Ivory slightly resented this, as it meant the noise would still be spilling over even when Ivory wanted peace and quiet and solitude, but he’d asked the chief about it and he’d said the room assignments were final and there was nothing to be done about it. It hadn’t escaped Ivory’s notice that Raphael’s room was one of the quietest, being around the corner and further from the others, but he didn’t dare go in there just yet, let alone ask Raphael if he could use it as a retreat in a headache emergency.

“...it was _nice_ , we were _having a nice moment_ , why can’t you just accept that, why do you always have to be _weird_ about it, I just don’t understand what the stupid drama is about -”

“We were _drunk_! It wasn’t - we were _not_ having a moment! _I’m_ not being weird, you’re just being an asshole! Now will you _back off_ -”

The voices died down abruptly as Ivory entered the common room, and Luvander looked guilty and miserable for a second before wrenching his arm out of Niall’s loose grip and stomping out in the direction of the kitchen. Niall sighed, rubbed his hand over his face and looked out of the window for a moment, the purple smudges under his eyes suddenly very visible, like butterfly wings catching the sun.

“He’s being unreasonable,” he said, more to himself than to Ivory, and gave the piano an absent-minded little pat on his way past. “If only he could get his head out of his arse long enough to…”

With a grunt and a vague nod in Ivory’s direction, he walked out, following Luvander down the corridor but then turning right to stick his head into Amery’s room and ask if he was ready. Ivory firmly closed the common room door and sat at the piano, breathing out slowly, and put his fingers on the keys.

He played, halting and careful and repetitious to begin with but gradually sloping and stretching out into something resembling the notes on the page. It wasn’t a hopelessly complex piece, but it was the first new tune he’d had to play in many months. Ivory felt the tension and strain ease out of his shoulders and his back like flotsam drifting on a clear sea, his muscles elongating and uncramping as his fingers found their paces and his mind emptied itself of everything except the music.

When he finally took a break to stretch out his arms and crick his neck to the side, the last of the winter light had faded outside the windows and someone had lit a row of candles on the windowsill. Raphael was in the kitchen, humming, the warm golden mouth of the doorway standing open like an invitation. Ivory could smell nutmeg and rosemary mingled with other things he didn’t recognise, and his stomach bit out an angry little gurgle.

“What time is it?” he made his way over to the kitchen through the scattered airman debris which apparently was necessarily involved in getting ready for a night out. Their training and flight duties were minimal this week and the next as it was, technically, Midwinter. Leave hadn’t been sanctioned since those rumours Maxwell had mentioned had reached more ears than his, but Adamo had lightened their schedule as some sort of festive treat, cruelly blasting them all awake after that stupor of a party only to tell them that they had time off. Apart from flight training, they also were excused from other airman chores. What this seemed to mean as far as Ivory could tell was that most of the boys were going out carousing at every opportunity, all night if they had it and after night flying if they didn’t, making the most of their uniforms and the spirit of the season to get absolutely hammered and either stumble home singing and horrific at some unreasonable hour, or fail to come home at all; showing up looking sheepish and smug to be greeted with a rabble of jeers and whistles the next morning.

However, it was only their third day of this. Ivory was soothed by being able to shut his bedroom door and bask in the silence of the space, as yet still primitively bare. He felt magnanimous enough to reserve real judgement until the end of a week. In the spirit of Midwinter, and all.

“Oh, are you joining me after all?” Raphael smiled at him across the kitchen table, a wooden spoon in one hand and a patriotically red-checkered dish towel in the other. There was a tiny smudge of something which looked like cinnamon on his nose and he had scraped his unruly hair back with one of Luvander’s ribbons into a messy, ineffective pony tail. Ivory felt a rush of heat in the base of his stomach which had nothing to do with hunger, and had to put his hands in his pockets and try to discreetly rub the sudden sweat off his palms. He and Raphael hadn’t kissed since the move to the Airman, hadn’t spent any time together at all, really - largely because Ivory had been avoiding that situation in case there was some expectation of _things_. He’d been quite proud of his evasive techniques so far - going to chat to Cassiopeia, feigning sleep, casually mentioning to Jeannot and Luvander yesterday that Raphael had been talking about going shopping now they’d received their first (indecently extravagant) stipend, but didn’t trust himself not to make terrible fashion choices. Raphael had legitimately been distracted too: he’d been out and bought a new book on their first morning of semi-freedom, while most of them were still sleeping off Ghislain’s nasty Ke’Han lighter fluid wine. The immediate jibes from those who were groggily conscious about him bringing home a pretty lover in a gilt-edged dress and what he was going to do about those leather bindings were met with a cheerful wave over his shoulder that culminated in shooting everyone the finger, and then his bedroom door had closed and no one had seen him for twenty-four hours. Also, he had been shopping with Jeannot and Luvander.

Ivory looked at him across the kitchen table and felt hungry like a wolf in his chest.

“I didn’t want to disturb you,” Raphael shrugged one shoulder, looking suddenly uncertain with a slight pull in the corner of his mouth, which Ivory wanted to lick away. “Sounded good though, pretty, is it seasonal? It sounded too summery, I don’t know, haha, I don’t know much about music though, you know that, anyway. Um.”

“You’re babbling,” Ivory told him quietly.

“Mm, sorry, yes,” Raphael agreed. “So, um. Dinner? It’s not much, the markets were a bit cleaned out for Midwinter, but… just a cottage pie, it was, um. My mum, she used to make it like this sometimes.”

Ivory frowned. Raphael didn’t talk much about his family lately, which was odd, now that he thought about it. He remembered that afternoon in the stairwell with the storm, and how Raphael had told him about his brother wanting to go to the ‘Versity, and he pressed his lips together on a sudden realisation. “Are you homesick?”

“Ha!” Raphael barked, “no! Of course not, I, why would I be homesick when I’m living with you rowdy lot of ingrates causing destruction and making a mess and being vile everywhere, who needs siblings when you’ve got Merritt and Ace and Niall, and… I mean, not that you’re rowdy or vile, obviously, or… or Ghislain actually, and Luvander’s really very clean, and… I’m fine.”

“So, you’re homesick,” Ivory summarised.

“Yes,” Raphael chirped sadly, then twitched and ran to rescue the pie from the oven. He’d also made a salad and a pot of green tea, which Ivory greatly appreciated, and they ate in silence for a while, Raphael wistfully nibbling on his vegetables and Ivory trying not to look at him too much. He felt pleasantly drowsy in the steamy warmth of the kitchen, with the spices unfolding on his tongue and the buzz of candlelight in the windows, but something in his stomach had scrunched up tight at Raphael’s words and refused to unclench.

“Tell me about them?” he finally asked, quiet and shy, and Raphael swallowed around a wobbly smile.

“My family? Eh, there’s not much to tell,” he said, and yet they spent over an hour in the kitchen while Raphael talked, his face increasingly flushed with pleasure and his hands fluttering through the air like the last birds migrating south for the winter. They were briefly interrupted by a stroppy Luvander, who’d chosen to stay behind after his argument with Niall in the common room and who took a slice of cottage pie and a whole packet of biscuits back to his room, but other than that the building remained blessedly silent that night.

“Thank you for dinner,” Ivory said as they were clearing away the dishes together. Raphael had both arms up to the elbows in sudsy water and flour in his hair as he looked up to flash him a smile, and Ivory felt that giddy tug in his stomach again and thought fuck it, took a step forward and put his hands on Raphael’s shoulders and stood on tiptoes to press a tiny, questioning kiss to the side of Raphael’s mouth.

“Hmm,” Raphael hummed, sliding his hands out of the water and putting them on Ivory’s hips, the warm water soaking through the fabric of his shirt. “You’re welcome.”

He opened his mouth to suck gently on Ivory’s lower lip, and Ivory reached up and yanked the silly velvet ribbon out of his hair. Carding both hands through the silky curls, he pulled Raphael closer and navigated them both so Raphael was now pressed up against the sink, and Raphael sighed into the kiss. He tasted like cinnamon and lemon and a little bit like green tea, and a shiver ran down Ivory’s spine when Raphael started tracing patterns into the skin just underneath the hem of Ivory’s shirt with his thumbs.

“You know,” Raphael muttered as they broke apart, “we do have private rooms now…”

“I’m tired,” Ivory blurted out in a sudden squall of panic, but Raphael’s face didn’t fall or crease into annoyance. He merely smoothed his thumbs over Ivory’s hipbones once again, then let them fall away and shrugged.

“Then we’ll sleep,” he said, with a hint of amusement, and the places where his hands had been on Ivory’s hips were now damp and cold, so Ivory took his hands and put them back there for a moment longer.

“Okay,” he whispered, briefly kissing the corner of Raphael’s mouth. “We should finish those dishes.”

Cleaning up didn’t take long, and Ivory spent most of the time furiously ignoring the way his stomach tingled and contracted in anxious anticipation at sharing a bed with Raphael again and being generally unhelpful while Raphael did most of the work. They went their separate ways after to brush their teeth and change into sleep clothes, but without talking about it, they both reconvened in front of Ivory’s room, which was closer to the kitchen than Raphael’s, and Ivory let them in with his key, dithering over whether to lock the door again once they were both inside. He didn’t want to suggest that this was going to be any special sort of _private_ , but if they were going to be sharing a bed and possibly kissing again, the last thing he wanted was Luvander or one of the others to barge in on that, or get up to some silent shenanigans in Ivory’s room while they were both asleep. On their first night here, Compagnon had forgotten to lock his room at night, and been punished for it with a blue face and some crude drawings on his wall, and Ivory rather suspected he would be far less patient about such nonsense than Compagnon had been.

“You’re very tidy,” Raphael remarked as Ivory finally turned the key in the lock and swivelled around. “Have you seen any of the other rooms? I’ve really no idea how Amery and Evariste managed to amass so much stuff in only three days. Pretty sure there were more clothes on the floor than in the wardrobes.”

“Mm,” Ivory’s nerves were too jangled to say that he had made a concerted effort not to go in any of the other rooms.

“Did you just lock us in?” Raphael asked, grinning cheekily and folding his hands demurely behind his back, pressing one shoulder coquettishly against the wall. “Why, Airman Ivory, is this a trap? Have you got secret plans to ravish me now you’ve got me all to yourself?”

“I can unlock it again and you can go,” Ivory suggested, keeping his voice as flat and calm as possible, twirling the key between his fingers. Raphael’s eyes dropped to the motion and he blinked twice, as if he was having trouble focusing, and wet his lips.

“What I mean is, I’m okay with that,” he whispered, husky like those spices from the kitchen were thick in his throat, “if you wanted to. But I’m also okay with… not. Whatever, really. Anything’s good. Please don’t stab me.”

“You know I don’t actually stab people,” Ivory reminded him, absently, because the idea that Raphael was okay with being ravished was distressingly appealing and he needed to not think about that right now. Or at all. Ever. Some of those things Luvander had insisted on talking at him about after that first kiss flooded Ivory’s brain, clamouring for his attention like under-nourished children begging in the market square, and he put one hand to the side of his head to drown them out.

“Are you alright?” Raphael asked immediately, his voice snapping upward to concerned, and Ivory was simultaneously richly glad and sorely disappointed to lose that low, throaty rumble of a moment before. “Is it your head? I really can go, if you want--”

“No,” Ivory put out a hand to stall him, and Raphael took two steps closer and caught it up in both his own, running his thumb across the back of Ivory’s knuckles. “No, stay, just. I don’t want to. I’m tired.”

“I know,” Raphael whispered and then said again: “let’s just sleep?”

It was remarkably easy, Ivory found, to drift off with Raphael’s arms around his back like a heavy, protective net; his head half on the pillow and half tucked into Raphael’s shoulder. Their beds here were larger than the bunks at the barracks, but still slim; narrow enough that sharing with someone meant touching them was unavoidable. Raphael was broad and warm and clean, the comfortable heat of his skin through his pyjama shirt and the steady rhythm of his heart and his breathing like a sweet lullaby under Ivory’s cheek. Ivory had never cuddled anyone before Raphael, certainly never shared his sleeping space and voluntarily allowed himself to be held by another person. He’d have been surprised about how much swifter and simpler it made falling asleep for him, if he hadn’t fallen asleep too fast to notice.

When he woke up, Raphael was twitching and shuffling and trying unsuccessfully to untangle himself. “Sorry,” he whispered in a snuffling, sleepy grunt which made Ivory want to push him back against the pillows and kiss him again, except that he also really needed to pee and the two things were probably not designed to be friends. “I’m just, I was going, arm, pins and needles, can I just - can I - sorry,” Raphael continued to mumble as he struggled his arm out from under Ivory’s shoulders and gave it a giddy flap around the pillows. “Ow, fucking… ugh, _ow_ , why do bodies do that, so unfair. You okay? I was trying not to wake you.”

“Bad luck,” Ivory murmured, suffused with a sleepy-warm contentment (aside from needing to pee) and stifling a giggle at Raphael’s still flailing arm. He pushed his head back against the pillow and watched as Raphael rubbed at his elbow, pouting at Ivory over his shoulder through the grey gloom of what must have been some creeping small hour.

“Well, now that we’re both awake,” Raphael sighed eventually, giving his arm one last shake and curling back around so they were nose-to-nose on the pillow, “what am I going to do with you, hm?”

The words were warm and breathy in the cool space between their mouths, and Ivory had never resented his human need to do such mundane things as use the bathroom so much in his life. Raphael’s hand cupped his shoulder, fingers curling around his bones and rubbing, softly, and he wanted to close his eyes and focus on how that felt but he didn’t want to lose sight of Raphael and the pretty shape of his mouth in the darkness, and the way his eyelashes were a delicate dark tracery against his cheek when he blinked. This time, Raphael kissed him first - a careful, questioning thing which alighted on his lower lip, his teeth grazing the soft skin for a fraction of a second before he sucked it softly into his mouth. Ivory sighed, twitched and violently fought the urge to press closer. He closed his eyes and admitted sadly “I need to pee.”

To his relief, Raphael only chuckled lightly in the back of his throat, and his fingers gave Ivory’s shoulder a tiny squeeze. “Go on, then,” he smiled, giving him a tiny shove towards the edge of the bed, “you teasing temptress, keep me waiting even longer. Actually,” he narrowed his eyes and realised out loud: “I’m hungry - you go first in case there’s any drunk wankers on the prowl and knock twice behind you if the coast’s clear; if not I’ll wait a couple of minutes.”

“Airman espionage,” Ivory quirked an eyebrow, “if only Ace knew.”

“The whole idea is that he doesn’t,” Raphael pointed out wryly. “Go on - meet me in the kitchen when you’re done?”

Ivory nodded, relief and disappointment mixing in his stomach like different types of liquors and making him feel vaguely sick as he slid out of the warmth of his bed and onto the cold stone floor. He checked the corridor twice, but all was quiet; knocked out the signal and felt marginally silly doing so, then padded to the bathroom to get that out of the way. He caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror on his way out, hair tousled and lips redder than usual, and were his eyes looking weirdly bright? He paused to wet his hands again and wash his face as well, just in case. He didn’t much feel like running into Luvander and being regaled with unbidden “advice” again, after all.

He made his way sleepily down the corridor towards the kitchen and yawned. All the candles had gone out except for a tall one in the common room, which flung twitching, weedy shadows against the walls as Ivory passed it. Raphael was standing outside the kitchen in the dark, and Ivory had about a second to wonder why he didn’t go inside before he heard the noises.

There was a weird slapping sound and a grunt, some rumbling as the table was pushed across the floor by something; a low, yelpy gasp and a curse, a whispered “please, Luvander…”

Raphael was turning around just as Ivory stepped up beside him and abruptly wished he hadn’t. It was dark in the kitchen, but a splash of moonlight fell on the table that Niall was currently bent over, both hands flat on the wood with Luvander’s fingers in between his as he fucked him, neither of them even undressed save for their trousers and pants being pushed down around their ankles. Eyes wide, Raphael took Ivory’s hand in his own and tugged him back down the corridor as quickly and quietly as they could manage. Neither of them said a word until they were safely locked in Raphael’s room, which was the furthest away from the kitchen, and had caught their breath.

“Ohh,” Raphael whimpered, pressing the heels of his hands over his eyes in distress, “oh gods, _why_.”

“Did they - were they -” Ivory stammered, just now realising the full extent of what he’d just witnessed and feeling mentally violated. “On the kitchen table?”

“Yes,” Raphael moaned, “on the kitchen table.”

They were silent for a moment, digesting this, then Ivory twisted his hand in Raphael’s sleeve and whispered “well, at least it wasn’t Adamo’s office this time,” and they peeked at each other shyly before bursting out in a synchronised peal of giggles that left them both breathless and flushed and helplessly clutching at each other.

It was surprisingly easy to go back to sleep after that, even though Raphael turned his back to Ivory this time, awkwardly fussing with the blankets for a bit before finally settling down. He didn’t seem to mind, though, when Ivory tucked his face between his shoulder-blades and put one tentative arm around him, his hand splayed out protectively over his heart, and sighed “g’night Ivory” with one last wriggle of his hips.

In response, Ivory kissed the space between two vertebrae of Raphael’s spine and smiled.

 

 


	15. Lesson Fifteen: In The Bleak Midwinter

Obviously, it wasn’t the way he had planned it. Not least because Luvander hadn’t planned anything at all - he was going to go out with the others because they all seemed calmer, less hyped, since they’d moved into the Airman three days ago, and he hadn’t been out in the evening for ages. After the chief had rudely woken them all up the other morning, it had been easy to avoid Niall for the rest of the day; everybody was more or less avoiding each other anyway to try and get a grip on their hangovers. Luvander had been sick twice and had a nap, scrounged some tea and dry biscuits from Ace and spent the rest of the afternoon finding different ways of arranging the handful of small things he’d amassed since leaving home in his new room. He’d never had a room of his own before. It was novel and exciting and, Luvander found to absolutely no surprise whatsoever, he fucking loved decorating.

When Jeannot had asked him if he wanted to go shopping the next day, he hadn’t even thought about saying no, and Ivory’s hint about Raphael wanting to join them was probably another one of his ruses to avoid speaking to Raphael himself that particular day, but Luvander didn’t mind. Raphael was good company, and Jeannot was sparkling and full of smirking titbits of information and sneaky tips about the city and how to woo the best deals out of the shop assistants in Upper Charlotte. The streets were strung with Midwinter lights and the cheerful good mood of the season glittered and sparkled in every window. Strangers offered them good wishes, recognising their uniform jackets, and the afternoon was a tangle of festive hat-tipping, kissing ladies’ hands and being offered double discounts on account of Midwinter and Airman Blue. They’d shared hot roasted chestnuts from a greasy paper bag and stopped in a café for big clay mugs of smoking spiced punch, cloves and star anise peppering the thinly liquored, nutty flavoured apple juice.

Luvander had got back with two bags laden with mostly scarves, but also some fat cinnamon-scented candles, a collection of hand-painted glass Midwinter baubles, two books that Raphael had insisted he absolutely must read, some picture postcards and a new winter coat for occasions he might not want to wear his high-collared, brass-buttoned affair and be recognised everywhere. He’d also found a Midwinter gift for Rosie, now he knew how to get it to her, and something for Holly, and - on a whim - a ridiculous sparkly string of Midwinter jewels for Yesfir, who had been complaining that nothing shone in the dragon pens except their own scales.

Night flying had been exhausting, but he’d been on reconnaissance training with Raphael and Amery, so again, it hadn’t been spectacularly difficult to avoid Niall. The Swift training had lasted longer than the others’, and by the time the three of them staggered back to the Airman, chilled and boneless with exhaustion, the other boys were either asleep or out on the town. Luvander had fallen into bed amid several of his unpacked new goodies and woken up late with some glittery chocolate squashed against his face - thankfully, still in its foil wrapper.

Going out that night had seemed like a good idea at the time, something to let off steam. The others were going to see some of the fancier bars up near the Amazement, and that appealed to Luvander: there would probably be dancing, and pretty strangers, and he could forget all over again that Niall had put his head in his lap and held his hand and told him to be proud of having sex on the chief’s desk. Luvander wasn’t ready to be proud. He wasn’t ready for Niall, altogether. It was much easier to avoid the whole thing, shelve it for a time when he’d worked out how to not be paranoid about what the other boys might do or say. It was all very well for Niall to say it didn’t matter and Amery to tell him no one cared, and he could deal with ignoring the pitying eyebrows and sympathetic looks cast at and about him; Luvander was used to ignoring that sort of thing from his other sisters already. None of it made him less anxious, the fear crawling its insidious way up his spine every so often and getting an icy-fingered grip on the back of his neck: his father saying that boy across the river had brought it on himself, Matthew blanking him in public and getting a hand around his throat and hissing threats like a trapped animal about what he’d do if anyone ever found out about them. Luvander didn’t know, yet, how to stop trying to cover his tracks, and having everyone know made him nervous, like a small-boned bird in a wire cage, exposed and ensnared all at once, convinced this would turn out to be a trap.

When Niall had accosted him in the common room while they were all still getting ready to leave, he’d crept up and caught Luvander’s sleeve around his wrist, murmured a hushed, cheery “hey” against his ear and been frowny and irritatingly confused when Luvander had shrugged him off again. “So… what, the other night was… what? I thought you’d got over your little tantrum,” he’d said sulkily, and Luvander had felt all his fear constrict like a girdle around his chest. For a second, he couldn’t breathe.

“Nothing happened the other night,” he said, flat and arid.

“We had a moment,” Niall insisted, quirking one challenging eyebrow.

“We did not,” Luvander huffed one syllable of a desperate, disbelieving laugh.

“Yes we did, it was _nice_ , we were _having a nice moment_ , why can’t you just accept that, why do you always have to be _weird_ about it, I just don’t understand what the stupid drama is about -” Niall had bitten out mulishly, bitter and mean like sour fruit, a berry bursting before Luvander’s mouth was ready for it. Niall looked sore and tired, and Luvander didn’t know if he’d gone out or gone to bed after the flight lessons the night before, but the idea that he might have gone out with Evariste and Magoughin and Compagnon made him suddenly spitting mad.

“We were _drunk_!” he hissed. “It wasn’t - we were _not_ having a moment! _I’m_ not being weird, you’re just being an asshole! Now will you _back off_ -”

Ivory appeared in the doorway. Luvander caught his eye and a wave of guilt and misery drenched him in a cold, damp splash that drowned his brief anger immediately. He wrenched his arm out of Niall’s loose grip, the loss of his fingers around Luvander’s wrist acute like the sudden sharp tang of biting into fresh citrus fruit.

He spent the evening trying to read one of those books Raphael had recommended instead of going dancing, started a letter to Rosie three times, wrapped his gifts for her and for Holly and felt abruptly bad about not getting something for Aria too, even though he barely knew her. At some point he fetched food from Raphael who was entertaining Ivory in the kitchen, and hardly even registered the ambient, homely atmosphere between the two of them until he was back in his room - by which point he was too maudlin and irritable to go out again and try joining them and soaking some of that up. They were probably busy enjoying each other’s company, anyway. Whatever was or wasn’t between them, whatever had or hadn’t gone down at the mountain lodge, they seemed comfortable and content with one another. Luvander resented that. He didn’t think he’d ever been comfortable and content like that with anyone, not even in those few short weeks of affectionate banter with Niall, because that had always been underscored with the twin wiry threads of sexual tension and apprehension of discovery anyway. Luvander curled up on his bed unhappily and wrapped his arms around his knees, trying to make himself as warm as the kitchen had felt, and failing.

He couldn’t sleep, and at some point in the middle of the thick, miserable night, he decided tea was the best answer to that, and dragged himself back to the kitchen without bothering about a light. The Airman was unnaturally still and gloomy, long shadows and a hulking concourse of furniture to navigate in different shades of gloom. The daytime riot of noise and colour and laughter that had filled the building since they’d moved in had vanished, suffocated under an eerie blanket of sleepy, lethargic grey moonlight. Luvander stopped in the middle of the kitchen and felt like the only person awake in the entire world.

Until someone’s key scratched in the front lock and there was a bump and a rough laugh before the door was shouldered open and he heard boots being kicked off and the soft burble of off-key singing under somebody’s breath. Luvander stayed still, hoping whoever it was would just stumble down the corridor and take themselves to bed whereupon he could creep back to his room with his tea and continue feeling sorry for himself until he fell asleep. As a result, Niall’s low, amused, strung out “baaaabe,” from the doorway made him grit his teeth and feel like punching something.

“Hey,” Niall continued in the same dopey, sanguine tenor, which Luvander recognised as meaning he’d had plenty to drink. “Heyyy, did you wait up for me? S’cute. You should’ve come out, you should’ve, there was - dancing, and - laaaaadies, haha, well. There were, though.” There was a shuffle, as if Niall had lost his footing and found it again, and a soft thump as he bumped himself into the door jamb and propped himself up. “‘Scuse me, I need some water, sober up before sleep,” he said, but didn’t move, and then “boys, too,” he added, a heady whisper, and still Luvander didn’t turn around. “Nice boys, you would have, mm, could’ve danced, and. Boys. I had one, I did, we kissed, it was - not as nice as you.”

“I didn’t wait up,” Luvander said icily, his fingertips pressing harshly into the outside of his mug until the heat became too much and he had to put it down. Niall hesitated, then sang “ _sha-ame_ ” under his breath and was suddenly behind Luvander, reaching an arm around him to pour himself a glass of water and slopping most of it over the edge.

It should have ended there. Luvander _should_ have taken his tea and what was left of his dignity and gone back to bed, should have gotten over it, should have fucking moved on with his life and stopped caring, but then Niall hiccuped and giggled and added “should’ve gone home with my kissing boy, I should have. Not as crabby as you. Oops,” and Luvander fucking lost it.

“ _Crabby_ ,” he exploded, “yes, I’m fucking crabby, you know why? Because all my fucking life I’ve been trod on and beaten up and sneered at and spat on for even looking at another man the way you’re looking at me now, and you prance in with your supportive bloody family and your shiny-haired friends and your naked shower singing and tell me this is all a bastion-damned joke and I should _lighten the fuck up because I’m crabby_!”

He took a deep breath and tried to will his hands to stop shaking so badly so that he could pick up his tea and leave. Niall was staring at him, his water glass slowly overflowing in the sink, mouth hanging open and looking almost comically shocked.

“Here’s a piece of advice,” Luvander said when no reply was forthcoming, his voice flat and spent now. “Next time you want to shove your tongue down some city floozy’s throat, get on your hands and knees and ask him to fuck _you_ for once. Then take a nice long trip to the country and make sure to tell everyone you meet how you liked that. But please, for the love of the gods, don’t come running to me when they hurt your ickle feelings just because they don’t want to hold your hand in front of the whole damned world.”

He was going to abandon his tea in favour of making a dramatic exit then, but was stopped by Niall’s hand on his sleeve - just loosely clutching, more a plea than a grab, and yet Luvander found himself incapable of shaking it off. Niall’s face looked soft in the streak of moonlight coming in from the window, like slept-in blankets and worn jumpers, and he held up a finger, shut off the water and gulped down his glass without a single word before putting it on the draining board and leading Luvander over to the kitchen table.

“Okay, I’m sober now,” he declared solemnly, “or close enough, anyway. Can’t say I was able to follow that little rant in all its intric- incritacities - details, but it was still enlightening.”

He squinted at Luvander, his face suddenly very close.

“Luvander,” he said slowly, “if you wanted to top, you should’ve just said.”

And that was how Luvander ended up fucking Niall over the kitchen table, because of course Niall had condoms and lube conveniently in his pocket, and of course he had to smirk at Luvander after saying those words like a challenge and a prize, and of bloody course Luvander was instantly, achingly hard; it had been a while since the equipment room, after all.

Contrary to vague expectations, Luvander did not enjoy topping all that much. Or perhaps he just didn’t enjoy angry kitchen table sex all that much; either way, he pulled his trousers back up without a word when they were done, and was out of the kitchen before Niall could so much as shape the words “pillow talk” with his mouth. Needless to say, the rest of that night passed in a daze of guilt, shame and sleeplessness, and when Niall didn’t show up at all the next morning when he was usually one of the first airmen up and about, Luvander decided he needed to go and talk to Yesfir about shiny things and scandalous gossip for an hour or two before he could face any of the others again.

~

The entire morning was a shambles.

There was to be flying in the afternoon, cursory exercises and general strategy to let off steam and keep the dragons happy as much as anything, but nothing else was on the books and tomorrow was Midwinter Eve. When Luvander had finished polishing and gossiping - and, alright, crying a bit - with Yesfir, he squared his shoulders and braced himself for the common room like he was heading into a bitter wind at the end of winter. Niall still wasn’t there, however, and his heart did another guilty stutter in his chest.

Amery and Evariste were spread out on the long sofa smugly sharing details of the girls they’d charmed last night, while Merritt looked sorry for himself lying on the floor, pale and hungover with his freckles standing out bold and dramatic against the wan flavour of his skin. Ace was upside-down in an armchair with his feet hanging over the headrest, loudly complaining about the lack of Midwinter decorations in this place - Luvander agreed, actually - and Ghislain and Magoughin were lounging like pillars against either side of the kitchen doorway, sharing a plate of toast and some kind of enormous joke which no one else was privy to. Jeannot was curled up on a cushion wearing some sort of silky dressing gown that Luvander was instantly covetous of, with his hair unusually disarrayed and still managing to look unacceptably delightful. Compagnon had both hands curled around a mug of strong coffee and his eyes closed in the steam: probably as hungover as Merritt, then. Luvander realised with a brief, crippling loss of oxygen, that somewhere along the way he had completely ceased to be overwhelmed by and drastically incapable of dealing with all their individual attractive quirks. The only one of them left who still made him catch his breath in his throat every time, without fail, just by dint of existing, was the absent Niall.

Well, Raphael and Ivory were also absent, but the point still stood, and it still hurt.

Luvander helped himself to some of the coffee that was still on the stove and spilled his limbs into an armchair with a sigh. Snow was drifting past the window again like flocks of off-white fairies mocking them through the glass. Ghislain announced that at this rate they were going to be snowed in on Midwinter morning, and there was a glum silence where everyone reflected on the fact that they were going to be stuck in a drab, mostly empty, undecorated building with each other instead of their families.

Not that Luvander particularly resented that last part.

He’d spent the last few Midwinters in bars mostly, drinking his way through festive cocktails and spinning girls around the dance-floor until his legs gave out underneath him, and he’d been planning on doing the same this year, until Rosie had suggested that he come and have dinner with her and her about-to-be-husband. If Ghislain was right, though - and he usually was - Luvander would probably just take few blankets and some food and wine down to Yesfir’s pen and be done with it.

It was during that little moment of un-festive silence that Ivory appeared, looking sleepily dishevelled and uncharacteristically rumpled. Several pairs of eyes followed him as he padded past the open common room door towards the bathrooms, and when the door clicked shut behind him, Amery loudly cleared his throat.

“Whose bedroom did _he_ just come out of?”

Jeannot coughed.

“Well, it wasn’t his own, and it also wasn’t Niall’s, since that’s in the other direction, so unless one of you was secretly harbouring him…”

There was another silence, awed and brief, and then Ace whispered: “Do you think Raphael is still alive?”

“There were no blood stains on his clothes,” Compagnon was quick to point out. “So he can’t have stabbed him, at least.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Jeannot said, eyebrowing harder than ever. “Have you ever watched Ivory eat fish?” Luvander had - it was quite a marvel to behold, actually. Ivory used two sharp knives to dissect it and remove every single bone, even the tiniest slivers, and the whole process took no longer than half a minute. He never got his hands dirty doing it either. “I bet he knows at least ten ways to kill someone with a knife soundlessly and without getting blood on himself,” Jeannot finished, shrugging lightly.

Before anyone could respond to that, a door further down the corridor creaked open and the sound of unsteady footsteps came closer. When Raphael appeared in the doorway, he looked bleary-eyed and pillow-creased, but nowhere near dead, and everyone breathed a discreet sigh of relief as he flopped down on the closest sofa, loudly wishing there was breakfast and oblivious to the shark grin silence slowly circling around him.

“Not stabbed, then,” Magoughin muttered, balancing a mug of coffee on his head.

“Well,” Luvander heard Ghislain murmur in reply, “nowhere vital, anyway.”

Whether Raphael even noticed these soft observations or not Luvander couldn’t be sure, but the thinly-veiled jokes about stabbing which began rustling through the other boys like wind through pond-rushes made Luvander increasingly uncomfortable. He folded his feet underneath him, cross-legged in his armchair, and balanced the coffee cup in the triangle between his knees. A slow spiral of steam curled upward from its black depths like Yesfir breathing softly on a cold morning.

Ivory stayed in the bathroom and Raphael slowly started to look more human around the remains of Ghislain and Magoughin’s toast which they had generously donated, apparently finished with whatever game had resulted in them feeding or refusing to feed each other slices in the doorway.

“So last night,” Jeannot smirked across at him, and Raphael looked bleary and confused but attendant nonetheless. “Was it… intense?"

“Uncomfortable?” Compagnon giggled, marvellously awake all of a sudden.

“Coldly precise?” Amery threw in.

“... _lyrically_ obscene?” Magoughin tried, with another toothy grin.

Raphael looked between them, his expression wide and worried, and then he caught Luvander’s eye for a moment and the tips of his cheeks coloured a delicate dog-rose. “Oh,” he said faintly with something that sounded like the tidal turn of relief. “You all know.”

“It was a bit obvious, there,” Ghislain pointed out.

“Mm, well, I didn’t - I wasn’t sure if,” Raphael stumbled, flicked his eyes back at Luvander and shot him half a trembling smile before looking swiftly away again. “Well, I don’t know, I thought,” he tried again, and interrupted himself with a violent yawn, scrabbling his fingers through the stormy tornado of his hair. “Just thought you might all be a bit… put out. I mean, we eat there? But maybe not?”

“Oh no, not put out, why would we ever be put out about anyone feeding us such a charming opportunity,” Jeannot’s smirk was, if possible, slinkier and more unacceptable than ever.

“Opportunity?” Raphael echoed weakly.

“For teasing,” Ghislain explained with his gravelly, thunderweight calm. “First rule of the Airman Handbook, never think your co-pilots will ever let you live the slightest thing down once they know about it.”

“You always refer to this handbook,” Raphael frowned, “I’d like to see it, please.”

“Sorry, you wouldn’t care for it,” Magoughin told him, “it doesn’t have gold leaves or leather bindings.”

“No, but - you always talk about the first rule and it’s always something different,” Raphael was still frowning, “how many first rules are there, surely some of them are second rules or third rules?”

“O ho,” Ghislain’s scarred eyebrow took a quick turn for his hairline and Luvander’s stomach grumbled awkwardly. Alright, perhaps he wasn’t one hundred per cent immune to the men who weren’t Niall, maybe there were still _moments_. “I see, Raphael thinks he’s a scholar, thinks he _knows things_ about the Airman Handbook. First rule of the Airman Handbook, little Fae,” he leaned over Raphael on his sofa and continued in a whisper as clear as a bell, “you don’t get to see it until you’re a real pilot, i.e. when you’ve been on a real raid.”

There was an immediate cacophonous wave of complaints and aberrations about this, since the majority of them hadn’t yet seen any official action - during which Ivory reappeared, flexed his fingers for inspection twice in front of his face and shot a quick look around the room from under his now-impeccably tamed hair. No one dared say anything about what he’d been up to in Raphael’s bedroom, stabby or otherwise, after that - Jeannot seemed to visibly shrink against his cushions and look away. In the midst of the raucous outcry against who did and did not qualify as a real airman yet, Amery demanded “where the fuck is fucking Niall?” and Luvander dropped his eyes back to his coffee, studiously keeping them there until Ace wondered loudly what it was going to be like flying in the snow later, would it be thrillingly slippery, how did you see anything. Those who had been out on the mountain all chimed in offering their own opinions - none of which matched his excitable expectations, and Luvander breathed out very slowly, hoping the majority of the awkward moments were now past.

~

To exactly no one’s surprise, Ghislain was right and, come Midwinter morning, all the doors of the Airman building save for the higher up hatches of the dragon pens were covered up in snow. Ace, Niall and Amery had gone into town the day before in a boozy fit of determination and hauled crates of decorations back to the Airman, which they had then proceeded to vomit upon every available surface, dozing airmen included, though no one quite had the guts to approach Ivory’s sacred piano. Raphael and, surprisingly, Evariste, who insisted that Midwinter wasn’t Midwinter without a fancy dinner, had scoured the markets for food, and Ghislain and Magoughin had taken it upon themselves to stock what space remained in the pantry with alcohol and spices, so when Luvander woke on Midwinter morning, there was a pot of lemon and ginger punch bubbling merrily on the stove in the kitchen, suffusing the whole building with a sharp citrusy smell that made his head spin just from breathing it in.

“Mooorning,” Magoughin grinned from where he was draped over a chair that was balancing precariously on its hind legs and nibbling on what appeared by all means to be a biscuit shaped like a pair of breasts. There were even tiny white nipples drawn on in icing. “Gingerbread?”

“No, thanks,” Luvander said primly, and squeezed his way between Evariste and Merritt, who were arguing - albeit tamely - over the best way to butter toast.

“Aw, shame,” Magoughin called after him, “we made some dicks specially for you, Luvander.”

Luvander shot him the finger and set about banging the cupboards open and closed as he assembled his own breakfast. He poured himself a cup of coffee with plenty of milk, slathered a hot raisin bun in jam and angrily peeled four tangerines before remembering that he’d only wanted one. He tossed one each at Mags, Evariste and Merritt, side-stepped the mess when Merritt failed to catch his, and made his way back past Ivory, who was playing a few jaunty Midwinter carols on the piano while Raphael made moony eyes at him from the sofa. Niall looked up from his board game with Amery and opened his mouth to say something, but Luvander breezed past as quickly as he could and stomped away down the corridor with his breakfast clutched tightly in his hands. He’d meant to take some blankets from the common room, but he was just going to have to sit close to Yesfir’s flanks now, because he wasn’t going back there any time soon, and if he took his duvet from his room, it would only be covered in soot later. At least he’d remembered to wear a scarf.

“Look who it is,” Yesfir rumbled merrily when Luvander slipped into her pen, a shiny wrapped present tucked under his elbow. “Are you here to cheer me up since I lost my last bet to Erdeni?”

“You talked to Erdeni?” Luvander asked, thunderstruck for a moment, before sitting cross-legged next to Yesfir’s warm body and taking a bite of his raisin bun.

“Course I do,” Yesfir preened, seeming amused. “I talk to all the dragons. Well, not Cassiopeia so much, that one’s got a nasty temper. Did you hear, by the way? We’re getting a new sister next year. She’s still in the workshop, another Fleet girl apparently.”

“Really?” Luvander asked around a mouthful of coffee. “Guess we’ll be needing another rider too, then…”

“Mm, fresh meat,” Yesfir agreed with a metallic purr and flicked her tail. “That for me?”

Luvander smiled and nudged the present at her so she could snap at the wrappings with her teeth. Some of the paper got singed in her hot breath, but that was alright; Luvander had got her a magic snow globe that changed scenery as the temperatures of its surroundings changed, and he had made a point of asking the vendor if it was fire-proof. Engulfed by Yesfir’s warm snort of delight, the flurry of snow and the tiny wooden hut with firelight in its windows inside the globe now faded to a lazy drifting of miniature cherry petals across a forest clearing in spring.

“Bless,” Yesfir chuckled, clicking one of her nails against the glass. “You humans are so quaint.”

“You love it,” Luvander said, sulkily, and Yesfir’s muffled, smokey laugh settled comfortably about his shoulders again. “So,” he asked as he nestled himself down for the long haul in the space behind her front shoulder, leaning his back against her scales. “What were you and Erdeni betting on anyway?”

Yesfir gave up on scrutinizing her new toy and snaked her head around to peer at him through one unblinking eye, her metal fangs bared in what Luvander recognised by now as a teasing grin. He could see his own reflection in the tiny disco mirrors of her snout. “You darling boys, of course,” she snorted. “I lost this one, but I’ll win next time. I’ve got faith in you, precious.”

“Faith in me… doing what…?” Luvander asked cautiously.

“Oh,” Yesfir swung back to her prize again. “I can’t give you all my secrets. Now, tell me stories about this thing you call Midwinter, I want to hear about fairies again, and I don’t mean your life story.”

When he made his way back upstairs several hours later, Magoughin and Ghislain were lying on the floor of the common room laughing so hard about something that they were practically crying, Ivory was teasing faded memories of carols out of the piano and not seeming to mind that Amery and Ace were cheerfully singing along in a sonorous inebriation, and Raphael was asleep in an armchair with a paper hat hanging off one ear and glitter in his hair. Some clever little shit had hung mistletoe over every single door in the building - Jeannot, most likely - and there was a small, soft parcel wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with simple string sitting outside Luvander’s bedroom.

It wasn’t from Rosie or Holly, because there was no way they could have delivered it - it could only have come from someone already inside the building, which only left the other boys. Nobody else seemed to have one, so it wasn’t a universal prank or anything to do with Adamo. Luvander picked it up gingerly, ran his finger along the twisted, dry cord of the string, turned it over a few times and then put it delicately on his bedside table. He sat amongst his sheets, standard-issue Airman blue cotton and a Volstovic red blanket piled on top - he was planning to get something fancier next time he went to a haberdashery - and looked at the unexpected, innocuous gift.

He didn’t open it.

~

“I got you this.”

Ivory tensed. He and Raphael were finally alone again. Having spent that first night together and somehow managed to evade complete annihilation from the other boys afterwards, Ivory had decided he wanted to sleep by himself the next two nights and Raphael had seemed to be fine with that. They’d shared a brief, fumbling kiss under cover of darkness in the corridor late on Midwinter Eve when the others were either in bed or quietly grouped around drinking port wine in an uncharacteristically civilised fashion, but it had been soft and quiet; leaving both of them wanting more but neither of them wanting to push it when most of their comrades were still awake. Raphael had murmured goodnight against his mouth and Ivory had given him a tiny shove in the small of his back over the threshold of his bedroom door, and pulled it closed behind him. When he’d walked back through the common room to his own bedroom, there’d been a low whistle and a chuckle of “what, are you tired of him already, Ivory? You cold-hearted queen, it’s Midwinter!” from Compagnon, followed by “he’s just playing hard to get, got to keep him wanting something, don’t you know how it works Comps,” from Magoughin.

“Explains why he can’t ever tie down anything except a whore,” Ivory had heard Ghislain rumble in reply. “Never any use throwing all your cards away on one wild weekend, haven’t you learned anything?” By the time he’d closed his door behind him and shut their banter out, it had fully descended into a lewd discussion of exactly why Compagnon didn’t have (or couldn’t get, or didn’t want, depending who was speaking) a regular lady friend.

And then it was Midwinter day, and they were snowed in, and all the decorations Thremedon had left on Midwinter Eve, the ones nobody tasteful had wanted to buy, had come to make the Airman their grave. Ivory woke up to gingerbread cookies shaped like body parts, and ate the penis ones without letting the slightest drizzle of response touch his features. When Jeannot had informed him that those were supposed to be just for Luvander, Ivory had stared at him until his syrupy smirk had quivered and disappeared and he’d said, sullenly, “or… well, yes, I suppose… and you, if you want.”

Ivory had managed to wait until he’d turned away before biting his lip to keep from grinning. He was getting better at this than ever. His brothers would be so proud.

Except now it was the end of the day, and festivities were winding down, the other airmen in various states of merry self-pity about their over-indulging in food and booze, and nobody paying any attention at all when Raphael sidled up to Ivory by the piano and presented him with a wrapped box tied with a white ribbon and said “I got you this,” flushed and pink and hopeful.

“You… what?” Ivory said, letting his fingers finish the little tune they’d been carrying before sliding them off the keys and into his lap.

“Midwinter present,” Raphael mumbled bashfully. “For you.”

He sat cross-legged on the floor, still holding out the little parcel, and Ivory allowed himself to take it, although he didn’t unwrap it.

“Why?” he muttered somewhat sullenly. The mail had been delayed this week, not just because of the weather but also because of their move from the barracks, and while Ivory was pretty sure that his brothers had sent him something inappropriate and embarrassing in the post that would no doubt arrive within the next few days, this was the first Midwinter present he had received this year. He’d seen some of the other airmen gift each other with ridiculous things - lady’s underthings for Compagnon from Amery, a bottle of eggnog-flavoured rum for Ghislain from Magoughin, a book of filthy sonnets for Raphael from Ghislain that Raphael had then proceeded to read out with gusto from atop a table in the common room, much to everyone’s amusement. But this present was a different affair. It was genuine, and Raphael was giving it to him while the others were distracted, and Ivory didn’t have anything to give him in return, because it simply hadn’t occurred to him that gifts might be a thing they did.

“I saw it in the market the other day and thought you might like it,” Raphael said and shrugged. “Why don’t you open it?”

Ivory looked down at the box in his hands and played with the ribbons for a moment before tugging them loose and sliding his fingertips underneath the brown paper. It fell open in his lap, and he cautiously peered inside the box to discover a small set of delicate writing utensils and two jars of ink, one black, one a dark, shimmery green.

“Oh,” Ivory said softly. “Thank you.”

“Do you like them?” Raphael asked, looking pleased as punch when Ivory nodded. His hair was tied back again, because it had got in his eyes when he’d been reading the poetry earlier, and Ivory’s fingers itched to pull it free. “I thought you could use them to practise. You could write a letter to your brothers, maybe. Or to me, if you want.”

Ivory nearly dropped the box at the horrifying thought of not only having to put any of his feelings towards Raphael in words, but also write them down and present them to him like a confession or a school essay, but caught himself just in time.

“Yes, maybe I will,” he said lightly, then closed the lid of the box again and slid it back inside its wrapping paper. “I’m sorry, I don’t have… I didn’t expect…”

He trailed off awkwardly, and Raphael’s mouth bloomed into a handsome smile that then burst into a small, conspiratorial grin meant just for Ivory. “Well, you know, lots of mistletoe around today… I’m pretty sure I’ve walked under at least ten sprigs and I’ve yet to be kissed.”

Ivory cast a quick look around the common room before leaning forward and hooking one finger under the festive green lace band holding Raphael’s hair together. He tugged it loose, then tied it around one of Raphael’s wrists and used it to pull him to his feet. Raphael groaned quietly and stumbled obediently after him, past a dozing Amery and a very intent game of cards between three very inebriated airmen who could barely sit straight at this point, and out into the dark corridor. They didn’t even bother to pull the door of the common room properly closed behind them before they slipped into Ivory’s room, which was cool and quiet, the darkness painted over with the quivery white light that came from a cloudless night sky.

Ivory leaned back against his door and reeled Raphael in by the ribbon around his wrist until their chests were flush. Raphael hummed, braced his arms on the door either side of Ivory’s head with Ivory’s fingers still hooked into the ribbon, and let his eyes trail slowly over his face.

“Mistletoe,” he murmured, his lips quirking up into a half-smile, “over your door. Didn’t you see?”

“Fancy that,” Ivory whispered, and let go of the ribbon to bury his hand in Raphael’s hair and pull him in for a kiss.

Raphael’s mouth was cool and damp and he tasted cheerful, festive, a hint of cherry brandy and the gingerbread spice mix. Ivory hummed vaguely against his lips and let his own part, enjoying the way Raphael pressed his mouth tighter and ran his tongue tentatively along the tips of Ivory’s teeth. Now that he had started doing this more often, kissing Raphael was nowhere near as alarming as the thought of it had been beforehand, especially now that he knew nobody seemed to care beyond getting a harmless tease in wherever possible. Ivory’s fingers flexed and rubbed through Raphael’s hair, which felt like coarse silk. He tugged lightly, and Raphael moaned softly into his mouth. Ivory tightened his fingers and held his breath for a second to try and deal with the way that made his knees feel liquid.

Then Raphael’s hands were on his waist, broad and firm and serious about being there, just above his hipbones like they meant it. Ivory was glad the door was solid at his back, because his legs felt insubstantial again, like they had the first time he’d slithered down off Cassiopeia’s back. With the hand that wasn’t entangled in Raphael’s curls, he reached down and found the loose end of that ribbon bracelet again, coiled it around his fingers so they were bound together; all the while letting Raphael’s mouth make hushed, honeyed shapes with his own.

Raphael’s hand gave Ivory’s hip a squeeze, and then travelled smoothly south, curving around his bum and cupping one cheek: a firm hypothesis for things they hadn’t talked about. Ivory’s breath got caught up in his throat and their kiss; he hummed again into Raphael’s mouth and Raphael’s fingers pinched cheekily.

He was smirking against Ivory’s lips, and that had no business, Ivory thought, being so attractive.

There was a loud thump as something - or rather someone - barrelled against the door outside and proceeded to stumble down the corridor, giggling and bumping into other doors on the way. Raphael and Ivory broke apart, but Raphael’s hand was still absently kneading Ivory’s bum, and Ivory shivered, tugging sharply on the ribbon to release some tension. He didn’t miss the way Raphael’s breathing became heavy and unwieldy, except he also didn’t complain, and so Ivory pulled again, experimentally, and Raphael made a mumbly little sound between his lips. His wrist was going to be sore tomorrow. Ivory’s stomach bristled pleasantly at the thought, and he let the ribbon chafe along the inside of Raphael’s wrist a little bit, enjoying the tiny, quiet “Ivoryyy” that Raphael breathed into the space between them.

Dissonant singing picked up in the common room then, some rowdy song about a whore and her beau, and just like that, Ivory felt self-conscious again. He let go of the ribbon and stepped away from the door to find his toothbrush, rummaging around a bit longer than necessary in his meagre belongings just so he wouldn’t have to look at Raphael.

“Ah,” Raphael said, sounding chastened and, perhaps, somewhat disappointed. “Yes, good, good idea, I’ll um, get mine. I probably taste like alcohol, I’m sorry.”

Ivory bundled his towel and a fresh flannel into his arms and avoided Raphael’s gaze.

“Can… I still come back here after?” Raphael asked tentatively, playing with the now frayed lace around his wrist. Ivory wished he wouldn’t, wanted abruptly to be alone, so he could splash his face with cold water and lie under his cool sheets and not wear pyjamas like he did when Raph was there because it was _awkward_ not to, and also, maybe, for once, so he could masturbate and get rid of that gnawing arousal for a while. He didn’t do it often, and hadn’t really felt the urge to in a long time, but when Raphael pulled too hard on the ribbon and winced at the rough scratch of lace on sensitive skin, Ivory would have given up half of his sheet music right then just for an hour or two of blessed solitude.

And yet, he found himself saying yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter comes, of course, from the Christina Rossetti poem and subsequent Christmas carol of the same name. You can read the poem [here](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/238450) and listen to the carol performed [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0aL9rKJPr4) if you don't know it!


	16. Lesson Sixteen: Choosing Your Battles

The raids started on new year’s day. “Piss-drinking Ke’Han bastards know we’re meant to be on holiday, I see how it is,” Amery glowered when Adamo announced that none of them would be going to the Esar’s new year ball in case the alarm bells were sounded.

“Come on, this is what we’ve been training for,” Niall nudged him with his elbow, an unexpected display of enthusiasm for being potential cannon fodder having inspired him to be the first one volunteering to sign up for the maximum number of raids. Even Ace was marginally less eager. “Think how much more holiday spirited you’ll feel when you’ve brought down half the Ke’Han army and you’re back here having a victory wank in the showers.”

The Ke’Han attack primarily involved magic of a different sort to that used in Volstov: their magicians had skill with weather and the elements, which meant that heading up to the Cobalts on a clear night would often turn into nothing short of an exercise in turning your dragon around and getting her back home through a snow storm so thick it was almost impossible to see. Not even Ghislain could predict them, which Merritt said was how anyone knew they were Ke’Han sorcery storms at all. The main concern was that the other side would also be using the storms as a diversion to cover up the advance of their armies through the mountain paths - they had tried similar tactics before, Adamo said, which had been partially responsible for the tactical inquiry that had led to the commissioning of the dragons.

The first week of attacks, Adamo tried to arrange the rotas so that teams included at least two of the seasoned airmen alongside any of the newer recruits. The raids were exhausting, alarming, and often felt pointless - flying out into bad weather and coming back drenched and frozen often without having even spotted a target let alone fired on one, bones shivering together even under the spray of a hot shower trying to scrub soot out from between their fingers. Nevertheless, they started to find combinations of dragons and riders which worked more intrinsically than others: Raphael and Ivory made a good team, for instance, which raised several ribald remarks about _connectivity_ and _team efforts_ and _having each other’s backs._ Raphael smirked tiredly in response the day after their first flight out with Ghislain and Adamo, a mug of tea pressed against his cheek and two fingers strapped up where he’d clenched Natalia’s reins too tight in an unexpected spin to avoid a miniature avalanche. Ivory scowled protectively at the side of his armchair, hip bumping the armrest, and although the jibes were lewd, they were also grateful; everybody quietly, mutually impressed with one another.

Luvander avoided flying with Niall for the first ten days, purely by accident. There were two shifts which they were both signed up for, but as luck would have it the alarm didn’t sound those nights. When on the third occasion it did, he knew by now that there wouldn’t be any time or space for personal anxieties and grudges anyway.

It was a starless night, rich with cold cloud and heavy with a weight of unshed snow. They flew with Compagnon and Jeannot in what Adamo liked to call the A combination: one of each type of dragon, and four of them meant they could fly in a physical A formation - Luvander taking point out in front for recon, Compagnon on heavy Spiridon in the centre - close enough behind him for significant back up but not so close that he wouldn’t have time or space to turn her if Luvander signalled retreat - then Jeannot and Niall as wingmen in the rear, flying slightly lower for a better angle of attack. The air was frigid and slicing even through the thick, fur-lined oilskin of their winter flying gear, and Luvander heartily wished as they took off that he’d remember to invest in a balaclava before he lost his nose to frostbite.

Even going into battle, swooping upward into the sky on Yesfir’s back was a special, adrenaline heartbeat of a thrill. More so, Luvander thought as they shot away from the Airman and the winter lights of Thremedon spanned out beneath them like golden beads from a broken necklace spilling from the throat of a lady at court - flying was sweeter still with the added rush of knowing there was a chance you wouldn’t come back. Ace’s entire attitude to life made sense in that moment.

“Oh, stop it,” Yesfir grumbled metallically with a click of her gears and a quick puff of oily smoke. “I can hear those halfway nihilistic thoughts.”

“No, you can’t,” Luvander laughed, letting go of the reins with one hand for a fragile moment to lay his palm flat against the side of her neck. Her scales felt fiery and excited.

“Hold on, princess,” she ground out cheerfully, “or I’ll spin you just to hear you shriek.”

Perhaps something went wrong with the Ke’Han mages, or perhaps they were simply too fast that night - none of them were able to say, but this wasn’t only the first raid Luvander and Niall went on together. It was the first raid which saw any actual fighting. The snow-clouds bulged and froze around them, bitterly cold and bracing to the point that the chill was under all their clothes and so settled on their skin that the men stopped noticing it. They’d seen the Ke’Han swell the clouds up like this several times now, and usually it meant an explosion of rain or snow or sometimes fearful, violent winds, targeted right when they were in the middle - but for some reason, this time, they didn’t burst. Later, Luvander couldn’t remember the exact order of events, but he remembered the sight of the trail of flickering lanterns that meant soldiers, and he remembered the swivelling roll of his stomach as he sent the signal back to Compagnon. Then, there was a screech and the roar of Spiridon’s attack, and then fire and greasy, black smoke from Erdeni and Al-Atan, billowing up and burning holes through the weight of Ke’Han cloud. Luvander circled in a loop high over his comrades where the air was even thinner and colder, dove back down and let Yesfir blow a few short, fat fireballs of her own, and circled again.

He didn’t remember whether they decided they’d done enough, or whether they were running low on fuel, or whether one of the others saw something that prompted them to signal retreat. By the time they were stumbling off their dragons back at the Airman, swathed in soot and choking smoke thick in their lungs, most of what Luvander knew was that his fingers were so numb he needed help from a handler to untangle them from Yesfir’s harness, and his knees were shaking like he’d never flown before, and he felt sick, and euphoric, and sick, and light-headed, and sick.

The familiar weight of Niall’s arm around his shoulders as the four of them staggered up the stairs back to their quarters was actually welcome. Compagnon was supporting Jeannot, who was limping slightly from gods-only-knew what, their heads bent together and a low murmur of conversation floating, indecipherable, behind them down the stairs.

“Hey,” Niall breathed, and Luvander’s fingers twitched, tingling, warm blood slowly and painfully making its way back down to the tips. “Well done.”

“Yeah,” Luvander whispered, “you too.” And, because they were at war and they’d just been on a raid and Niall had taken out enemies with fire and that was fucking terrifying when you thought about it, because of that and because he was tired and stiff and nauseous and covered in soot, he reached up and squeezed Niall’s hand, laced their fingers together as best he could with his own still not responding properly.

Niall pushed his nose into Luvander’s cheek as they reached the top of the staircase and made a noise like a smug little bird, and all of a sudden Luvander forgot about exhaustion, the dead weight of it shaking off from his shoulders like a discarded blanket. All of a sudden, he was wired as fuck, his whole body trembling like the thrum and pulse of the blood beating its way back down into his chilled fingers.

“Luvander,” Niall murmured, lips wet and smeary and cold against Luvander’s cheek.

“No, fuck it,” Luvander said, “fuck it, fuck me, I can’t go to bed now, I _can’t_.”

Niall stumbled back a few paces, but their fingers were still tangled and so he pulled Luvander with him, nearly collapsing them into the wall. He looked at Luvander, eyes bright and over-tired, his hair a thick, gooey mess and a faint imprint of flying goggles in the dirt of his face, and then he kissed him, hungry and slow, and Luvander kissed back and felt like he could breathe again after emerging from one of Ghislain’s infamous headlocks.

“Mhm,” Niall mewled against his lips, clumsily steering them down the corridor and through the nearest door, which happened to be leading into the common room. Compagnon and Jeannot had disappeared, and there was the faint sound of the showers further down the corridor. It would be a while until they came out, since no one had yet found a speedy way to rid their bodies of oily dragon soot, but Luvander didn’t much care at the moment, all he cared about was Niall’s mouth on his own and his hands cupping Luvander’s face and his thigh pressing hard and warm between Luvander’s legs.

Niall did not, as requested, fuck him. He peeled Luvander roughly out of his clothes, then sat on one of the sofas, still in full raid gear, and made Luvander kneel over him, naked and shivering. Then he slid slightly downwards, put his hands on Luvander’s skinny hipbones, and took his long-since rock hard cock in his mouth without the faintest hint of a warning, and Luvander had to grip the back of the sofa hard and couldn’t suppress a twitchy little sigh at the feel of Niall’s lips sliding over his hot skin. Niall sucked once, hard, then adjusted the angle of his head and massaged Luvander’s hips into a slow, stuttery rhythm. Luvander was vaguely afraid of choking him, but made the mistake of looking down and watching as his cock slid in and out of Niall’s mouth, and Niall was _looking_ at him with an expression like he’d just seen the night sky for the first time in his life, and Luvander was already shaking with exertion at holding back.

“Want… you to fuck me,” he gasped, spreading his legs wider and moaning when Niall grabbed his arse with both hands and pulled him closer; deeper. Then Niall pushed him away again and out of his mouth completely, just a glistening filament of spit connecting them for a moment before Niall grinned and managed to somehow stand up and scoop his arms under Luvander at the same time so he could carry him away from the sofa and deposit him gently in an armchair.

“Well, I want to suck you off, and you’re being uncharacteristically uncooperative,” Niall murmured against the inside of Luvander’s thigh as he opened his legs wide and nibbled his way back up to Luvander’s cock. “If you tell me to stop, I will, but I’d really rather you lay back and enjoyed the ride, sweetness.”

Luvander did not tell him to stop.

It seemed to go on for ages, because every time Luvander came close to orgasm, Niall slowed things down again, and after the raid and the hot-bitter twist of adrenaline burning itself out in Luvander’s veins, he actually took a long time to come in the first place. At some point, he noticed, dimly, that the hiss of the showers had cut off, but there was no sound coming from outside in the corridor, so he assumed Compagnon and Jeannot had gone to bed without looking for them, and went back to - enjoying the ride. When he did finish at last, with his toes digging into Niall’s shoulders and his fingers clutching at the back of the armchair above his head, he was quite sure he must look like an epileptic frog, and the exhausted, keening sound that washed out of his mouth and dribbled down his chin wasn’t the most attractive he’d ever made either, but Niall kept looking at him, kept swallowing until he was completely spent, and gently rubbed his hands up and down his tightly locked thigh muscles to loosen them up as Luvander trembled with aftershocks and exertion.

“You’re beautiful, Luv,” Niall said, his voice low and smooth like a pebble worn down by the sea. Luvander laughed nervously, a brief, shaky sound that got lost in the empty common room, and began to gather up his limbs from their various sprawls and perches. Every movement ached and echoed in his bones now, and he felt weary and strangely bereft.

“Niall,” he mumbled, pitching forward a bit until his forehead was on Niall’s shoulder. “I need to go to bed.”

“Mm, yes you do,” Niall crooned, gently fisting one hand in Luvander’s hair. “Shower first, though. Come on, we’ll be quick, I’ll scrub you off with one of those infernal sponges and you’ll be good as new.”

Which he did, because Luvander couldn’t remember how to protest, and everything was nicer and easier and looser with Niall’s cheerful assistance. They weren’t quick, the trouble with soot being the way it grew more stubborn the longer you ignored it, and the showers were hot and slippery and soporific. At one point Niall dug his fingers into Luvander’s hair and rubbed it furiously full of shampoo, then reeled him in and kissed him again under the spray, the citrus-almond soap trickling down his cheek and the back of his neck. “Like the good old days,” Niall smirked against his mouth, and Luvander groaned and slumped forward again; let Niall finish massaging his hair clean with his face pushed into the crook of Niall’s warm, wet neck.

Afterwards, Niall steered him all the way back to his bedroom, both hands keeping him in a straight line, and bumped the door open with his shoulder. “Home safe,” he said softly, a tiny sadness under the barrel of the words. His fingers traced Luvander’s palm lightly. “Okay?”

Luvander blinked at him, and thought wearily about how much better he’d felt with Niall’s hands on his skin than he had since the morning they’d woken up in the mountain cabin. He thought about Niall’s mouth on his neck and the greedy, warm little noises he made when he gave head, and he thought about the way Niall’s laughter still made his skin ache with wanting to touch him whenever he heard it. He thought about _you’re beautiful_ and he turned his hand around, looped his fingers gently around Niall’s wrist and tugged him a step closer.

“Sleep with me,” he whispered.

“Okay,” Niall agreed immediately.

They didn’t turn on the lights, just tumbled into Luvander’s bed in a muddle of limbs, towels shed and discarded on the floor. Luvander mouthed a few urgent, clinging kisses at Niall’s neck and throat and jaw, until Niall caught his face and ran three fingers tenderly down his cheek, climbed on top of him and kissed him properly, slow and dreamy and worn out. “Sleep, come on babe,” he mumbled into Luv’s mouth at the end of it, sliding off him to the side, hooking one leg over both of Luvander’s knees. “You’re vibrating with tiredness and I’m too knackered to even make a joke about that.”

“Nghm,” Luvander agreed, and rubbed some circles with his fingertips into the backs of Niall’s shoulders. “But--”

“No, no but.”

“I want to--”

“I know,” Niall hummed, drowsy and warm and the whole length of his naked body soft as silk along Luvander’s side: chest, hip, thigh. “I know you do. Morning, okay? I’ll hold you to it.”

As he fell asleep with Niall’s fingers combing slower and slower patterns into the hair at the nape of his neck, what Luvander remembered most clearly about the raid was that he’d felt safe the second Niall and Erdeni had started their attack, and safer still the moment Niall had put an arm around him on the stairs back up from the dragon pens.

~

He woke up with a headache and a foot that was chilled and sorry about it, having not quite made it under the blankets. A thin, icy dawn was trickling through the gap in his curtains and Niall was breathing slowly, serenely, on his collarbone. There was a tiny dab of soot they’d missed just under his ear, and Luvander smudged at it softly with the tips of two fingers after he’d twitched the covers back over his foot.

“Hghnm,” Niall snuffled and burrowed his face closer. “No.”

“No what?” Luvander whispered, fondly.

“No, still sleeping,” Niall grumbled.

“I’m sorry,” Luvander said then, because he didn’t know when was the right time to say it, and if he kept it to himself for much longer the web of disaster it had woven across his throat would be too thick for the words to break through at all. “About… well, before, and… the kitchen. I’m sorry.”

“Noooo,” Niall moaned, snuffly and sad and creamy-thick with sleep. Then, with a sigh that could have levelled half the city, he shifted back on to his shoulder and blinked at Luvander, his hair tousled and furious and his eyes halfway unfocused. Luvander had never seen Niall look properly exhausted or morning bleary; he was usually the earliest riser and naturally blessed with breakfast perkiness that drove most of them mad until they’d had adequate caffeine. The sight was both endearing and a little bit worrying, the smudges of lost sleep bruised under Niall’s eyes looking like the result of something larger than their night’s raiding.

“Did you just make feelings words at me,” he cracked the tiniest sliver of a smile, eyes scrunching like daisy petals in the corners.

Luvander rolled his eyes. “Maybe. Go back to sleep, you look worse than when Amery had that cold and a hangover at the same time.”

Niall took a deep breath and squinted at Luvander, then pointed his index finger right in his face. “No, no, no. No. Feelings words from you are rare and sacred. I can’t go back to sleep _now_. Tough luck.”

Sighing, Luvander fell back against the pillows and rolled his aching shoulders. His lungs felt clogged and heavy and his eyes itched. His breath made little puffs of wispy white condensation in the freezing air. There was still snow piled up on the window ledge outside. “Well, _I_ want to sleep, so you can either _lie back and enjoy the ride_ , or go be awake in your own room, because I’m not sharing my body heat with a chatty nuisance today,” he grumbled sleepily.

“Mean,” Niall pouted. “Okay, sleep now, but I’m making you breakfast later and don’t you dare go back to pretending you hate me after that, because I’ll… I’ll… never make you breakfast again.”

He was remarkably quiet after that, and even fell asleep quicker than Luvander did, back to spooning him now with his arms wrapped snugly around Luvander’s stomach and his face tucked into the back of Luvander’s neck. He was warm, and cosy, and Luvander never wanted to let him leave his room again, other airmen be damned.

The next time he woke up, it was because Niall was pressing his nose against the crest of his spine and singing a little song Luvander didn’t recognise just under his breath, the words ghosting warm and damp across his skin. Niall’s hands were fanned out one over his chest and one flat on his stomach, and their legs were tangled, feet and ankles and knees slipping together under the sheets. They were both hard, but without the insistent neediness that had led to most of their sexual interactions. Luvander had briefly forgotten they were naked.

He’d briefly forgotten everything in the grisly first moment of waking up, cold light from the fresh snow outside slithering in a faint, white stripe across his room. For about three blissful seconds, all Luvander really knew for certain was that he was comfortable, and pleasantly, but not naggingly aroused, naked with someone who was both competent and desirable to take care of that if they felt like it. It was, momentarily, idyllic.

And then with a rush like someone hammering the side of his brain with one of Yesfir’s hand-span flank scales, he remembered the raid, and the blow job in the common room, and their slippery, affectionate shower. Asking Niall to stay, not trying hard enough to get him off because he’d been too tired; waking up after - what? two hours - with the choking, desperate need to apologise about everything that had gone on before.

Niall’s sleepy, semi-coherent response and his promise of breakfast. Luvander’s stomach growled.

“Someone’s huuungryyy,” Niall sang gently against the back of his neck.

“Someone promised me breakfast,” Luvander mumbled against the fabric of his pillow, and then felt awkward about sounding like a diva.

Niall hummed a little, bubbly murmur of amusement, and it tickled. “You are such a grumpy pants in the mornings,” he said, and Luvander could feel his mouth curving up into a smile.

He kissed the shy curve of skin where Luvander’s neck mumbled down into his shoulder, nudged his face forward and kissed the dip of his collar bone, and then the side of his throat, the corner of his jawbone; the lobe of his ear. Then, while Luvander was still tilting his head and exposing his neck to more of this treatment, Niall’s hands found his shoulder and wrist and tugged him around on the pillows so they were face to face, pressing their noses together and tangling their fingers.

He moved unfairly fast, Luvander thought, for someone who couldn’t have been awake above ten minutes.

“Hey,” Niall whispered, a brush of intimacy and secrets in the thin space between their mouths. “We good?”

Luvander stretched out one cramped knee, ran his instep along the back of Niall’s calf, slightly arched his back into a new shape and squeezed Niall’s fingers. His muscles were stiff and unhappy from the flying and the cold and the tension - and the common room activity, probably - but it wasn’t actually painful; more like a low thrumming complaint about overuse cording through his limbs. “We’re good,” he murmured, nuzzling the side of Niall’s nose with his own so he could press the words against the corner of his mouth.

“Good,” Niall agreed, and kissed him.

“Oh, gods, don’t,” Luvander wrenched his face away with a grimace, “I need to brush my teeth.”

“Mmhm, yeah, don’t care,” Niall grinned, chasing his face with his mouth. Luvander struggled and fidgeted and tried to escape and Niall laughed and deposited kisses which got sloppier and wetter and noisier all over his face, blowing a damp raspberry against his forehead and licking his cheek until they were both clutching and giggling at each other, and then he fisted his hand in the back of Luvander’s hair and kissed him properly anyway: fat and fierce and full on the mouth.

The thump of someone’s fist against the door wasn’t horrendously intrusive since they’d both half anticipated it. Adamo would be wanting a report from the four of them who’d flown out last night at some point and while he was inclined to let his boys sleep in the morning after a raid, it might have been afternoon by now for all either them could tell. Niall had rolled over on to his back and arranged Luvander along his side, their legs still doing fidgety footsie business together at the bottom of the bed. He was holding Luvander’s hand against his own chest and running his thumb in circles against the back of his wrist, still peppering his face with kisses and hushed giggles, though he stopped when the knock came.

“Are we going out there together or do you want me to sneak,” he asked quietly when Luvander had called out that he’d be just a minute.

Luvander looked at him, at his bird’s nest of bed hair and the circles under his eyes; at the tiny pucker of regret in the corner of his mouth which hadn’t been there a moment ago. He reached out and pressed the tip of one finger there, gently, wishing he could rub it away like the smudge of soot still behind Niall’s ear. “I’m terrified of going out there together,” he admitted, “but they’ll already know we’re both in here when you don’t answer your door.”

“True,” Niall shrugged one shoulder. “Up to you.”

“Let’s do it,” Luvander said on the end of a shaky inhale, and caught Niall’s hand to kiss the backs of his fingers one by one. Niall wiggled them approvingly and smiled.

“Breakfast after,” he said sternly. “And then we’re coming straight back here so we can talk about why you never unwrapped my Midwinter present.”

Luvander looked up at his bedside table with slow horror. There it sat, still neatly wrapped, untouched, not a single ribbon out of place. He’d felt it many times, trying to discern what was in it, but all that he could find out was that it was something soft and made out of fabric. Niall took hold of his chin and turned it back down so Luvander was facing him again.

He grinned, and leaned forward to whisper in his ear: “Don’t worry, we can unwrap it together. And then you can unwrap your other present…” There he pressed Luvander’s hand over his crotch, and Luvander couldn’t help it; he laughed.

~

Most of the new airmen were stupendously jealous of the four that had apparently come back in from an actual raid some time in the wee hours of the morning. Raphael returned from the kitchen with two mugs of some treacly dark, smoky tea and a bouquet of second-hand stories he’d heard from Magoughin, who’d heard from Compagnon and Jeannot before they’d gone back to bed. Ivory sipped his tea, propped up on his and Raphael’s combined mass of pillows in Raphael’s bed, and was insanely glad he hadn’t been on raid duty last night, since he’d spent most of it curled up in agony with one of his headaches blasting shock waves through his body. The pain had finally ebbed about an hour ago, and he was barely awake, let alone coherent, but it was okay, because Raphael was taking care of him, holding his mug steady when Ivory’s hands shook too hard and smoothing down his bed hair and making light, quiet words at him that prickled coolly along his abused nerve endings and made him feel sleepy and safe.

It took him another hour before he made it out of bed and into the nearest bathroom, and when he came out again, Raphael was waiting with an extra cardigan and a plate of toast and kissed his temple before murmuring “Chief wants us in the common room in ten, but I can make excuses for you if you’d rather go back to bed.”

“Mm,” Ivory said, pulling the sleeves of the cardigan over his hands. It belonged to Raphael, who had, somewhere along the way, cottoned on to Ivory’s sneaky penchant for squirrelling away whatever cosy garment Raphael had been wearing lately after it had acquired Raphael’s smell and before it had to go in the wash, and now liked to cheerfully indulge this little habit by “forgetting” his jumpers in Ivory’s room whenever he stayed over. “I’ll be fine, so long as he doesn’t bring that fog horn thing again.”

When they walked into the common room, everyone save for Niall and Luvander were already assembled there, although they were mostly piled up on one sofa - the only clean one left, Ivory noticed after some confusion. The other sofa and two armchairs were covered in greasy soot and hand-prints, and some of the blankets and cushions had been compromised as well and were strewn over the floor along with a pair of flying goggles and one forlorn leather glove.

“What happened?” Raphael asked Ghislain, who was leaning smugly against the wall with a gigantic coffee mug in one hand and his shirt blithely untucked. Ghislain shrugged, saluted the chief with his coffee as he walked past to chase Ace out of one of the still unsullied armchairs and claim it for himself, and then did a little double-take when he caught sight of Ivory’s dishevelled, squinty-eyed state. Ivory was pretty sure he heard him growl “nice work” at Raphael, but didn’t quite have the energy to level him with one of his knife-sharp glares and instead deftly plucked the coffee mug out of Ghislain’s hands as he followed Raphael over to the piano.

“Here,” he said, holding it out to Raphael, “I don’t like coffee.”

Raphael grinned, took the coffee, and sat on the piano stool, pulling Ivory into his lap and putting his chin on his shoulder and one hand on Ivory’s stomach. For once, Ivory didn’t mind the public snuggling, and started nibbling on his toast with a pleased smile.

The chatter around them died down when Niall and Luvander appeared, both clearly dressed in Luvander’s clothes, which were slightly too small on Niall, but even more importantly, both freshly emerged from Luvander’s bedroom.

Adamo cleared his throat.

Luvander’s eyes widened in horror as he saw the soot-smeared furniture, while Niall looked faintly pleased with himself and seemed to be holding back a laugh when Luvander fell back to - uselessly - hide behind his back.

“Care to explain?”

“Do we really need to?” Niall challenged with an eyebrow and a grin, making a grab for Luvander’s hands and pulling them close around his stomach. Luvander hid his face in the back of Niall’s shoulders with a tiny, embarrassed mew. “Victory sex,” Niall added, shrugging one shoulder when Adamo’s stern, unblinking gaze didn’t shift. Luvander shook his head mutely, still pressed against Niall’s back. “It’s a thing. You should try it, Chief.”

“I appreciate you boys need to let off steam after an occasion like last night,” Adamo said levelly, entirely too calm to be safe. Maybe Ivory was hyper sensitive thanks to his migraine but he was sure he could feel the creeping threat of absolute and chronic doom radiating out from the chief and travelling across the common room like sound waves. “There’s a reason you have bedrooms.”

“Have you ever _had_ victory sex?” Niall narrowed his eyes, and Ivory wasn’t completely sure, because his vision was still quavering and too bright, but it looked to him like Luvander mouthed _don’t_ or _no_ , or perhaps just a hearty _ohhh_ into the fabric of his own sweater, and Niall tightened his fingers on Luvander’s hands in response. Compagnon had buried his face in Amery’s shoulder, shaking with suppressed giggles. “Because it sounds like you haven’t,” Niall went on cheerfully, “there isn’t always _time_ , you see, these things are - euphoric. You have to seize the moment, you know, bull, horns, all that carpe diem stuff. It’s--”

It was the wrong thing to say, was what it was. Ivory winced back against Raphael’s bracing chest when the shouting started, and slithered out of his grasp altogether and back to Raphael’s room when it continued. He was actually grateful that Niall was still giddy and giggling and completely unchastened, because it meant Adamo didn’t have the attention to spare to notice someone else sneaking off.

He hid behind the safety of Raphael’s closed door, curling up on the bed they’d both slept in three nights in a row now. The blankets smelled like cinnamon and fresh, clean sweat and soft wool. They didn’t always sleep in the same bed, but it had been cold, and if they weren’t on raid duty and therefore needing to be in their own rooms, cuddling was nice. Ivory slept better with Raphael there, most of the time. He preferred to come to Raphael’s room though, which was cosier, a big, knitted mess of homespun comforts - a blanket crocheted by his mother draped over the bed, the warm, educated scent of the well-loved books which lined his shelf, a faded rag-rug he’d picked up in a flea market at some point, spilt ink and spiced tea. Raphael had purloined a little tin kettle from somewhere or other and had a stash of different dried leaves on his desk and two clay mugs so he could make them both tea over the fireplace. There was always a twist of paper from the market with Ivory’s favourite Ke’Han green; which neither of them ever mentioned in hearing of the other boys, who would have fired a hundred accusations of treason at him, knife-threats and death-glares forgotten in the name of wounded compatriotism.

It was this tea that Ivory made a pot of when the shouting in the common room was fading to an irritated rant, sitting cross-legged in front of the fireplace with the crochet blanket wrapped around his shoulders and some parchment and his writing utensils laid out before him. He’d already used them once, to painstakingly copy one of the filthy sonnets from Raphael’s new book which he’d found unexpectedly instructive, on an afternoon when everyone had been out to town and Ivory hadn’t wanted to leave his room. He’d meant to burn it after, because the gods forbid anyone found such a thing in his room, but then he’d felt a little bit proud of the unfamiliar ache in his wrist and the glistening green ink that spelled out every single letter to the end, and in a fit of momentary stupidity, he’d hid it amid a stack of sheet music, and later had been unable to locate it again.

 _Dear Maxwell and Sebastian_ , he wrote now, bent low over his parchment. He hesitated, chewing on the end of his quill and staring into the fire. What he wanted to write was something like: _Thank you for your last letter. Enclosed is my new address, since we moved into the Airman building at last. I have a private bedroom now, which is a relief. As you can see, I have acquired a new skill here, entirely without temper tantrums I might add. Perhaps Raphael is simply a better teacher than Maxwell. Thank you also for your Midwinter presents, although Raphael was very upset when I tried to burn the book. I gave it to Compagnon instead, as he collects this sort of thing. I am very well and spend most of my nights wreaking havoc and causing fiery destruction over the Cobalts, which, as you can imagine, I greatly enjoy. So there is really no need for you to come and visit me again. Ever._ He didn’t quite manage to write this all down the way he’d planned, though, and ended up having to re-write the letter three times before he stopped bothering. It was still a wobbly, splotchy mess, and he was fairly sure he’d misspelled at least half of the words, but he was too proud to ask Raphael and besides, Maxwell had a creative mind, surely he’d be able to piece it together, or else he’d simply make up his own vile version, which he probably would have done either way.

Raphael was by then lounging on his bed and reading, and between them, they’d emptied the pot of green tea. “That looked intense,” he commented wryly as Ivory chucked the discarded letters into the fireplace and slipped the final one into an envelope. “Need some wax for the seal?”

“Yes please,” Ivory said, flexing his aching fingers. It annoyed him that they still hurt after writing, and he always made a point of playing the fastest, most distorting melodies on the piano when they did, as a sort of petty punishment. Raphael sat on the floor beside him as he copied his home address onto the envelope and sealed it, and Ivory’s traitorous heart sped up when he caught him watching, a gentle, smudgy expression on his face.

“What?” he murmured, sullenly inspecting the ink stains on his fingers. “I can wash those off.”

“It’s not that,” Raphael said with a smile. “Just… never mind. Want to take a walk later and drop that off?”

Ivory opened his mouth and for a brief, mad moment wanted to say _want to go back to bed and put your hands in my pants?_ but caught himself just in time and nodded instead.

He was _ridiculous_ , and not sleeping with Raphael was getting very old very fast. The longer he avoided it, the more intense his attraction to the other man became, but at the same time it also seemed a more and more impossible feat to just ask for it. He was grateful that Raph never pushed the issue, but something had to give sooner or later, or Ivory would go out of his _mind_.

~

“Haha, so, that was…” Niall said as the closed the door of Luvander’s room behind him, balancing a breakfast tray and two mugs of hot chocolate in his hands.

“Horrible,” Luvander finished for him, both hands pressed down over his face. They’d spent half the day scrubbing the common room under Adamo’s watchful gaze, and even now the sofa was still looking more grey than red, but they’d finally been allowed to go and wash up, and then Niall had insisted on making him breakfast with about half the contents of the pantry. He joined Luvander on the bed and pushed a plate on him, piled high with steaming, fluffy scrambled eggs, fried sausages and hot buttered toast, and Luvander’s stomach growled loudly at the smell. “Thank you, this looks…”

“Delicious?” Niall winked and demonstratively sucked the grease off one of his sausages, and Luvander had to look away and cram his own mouth full of egg to get over that particular image. “Of course it does. I made it, after all. Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that Midwinter present, though. I see you tried to subtly relocate it while I was gone, you little sneak.”

“Damn,” Luvander mumbled, shovelling more food into his mouth. He felt cold and clammy after all that cleaning, and slightly dizzy since the only thing he’d had to eat all day had been some stale crackers they’d found in the common room and that had looked more and more appealing as time went on despite their unknown origins. So far neither of them had started puking, though, so they probably hadn’t been poisoned. You never knew with people like Jeannot and Ivory and their silent vendettas against anyone who’d misbehaved in their eyes.

“I had just assumed you hated it, you know,” Niall chatted easily, airy hands waving and illustratively dancing about his face when he wasn’t occupying them with the business of eating. “Not because it’s hateful, I knew there wasn’t anything objectionable about it, I just assumed you hated me.”

Luvander had to put his fork down and swallow heavily around the mouthful of toast he was halfway through. “Okay,” he said quietly, and rubbed self-consciously at the inside of his wrist, “okay. We should talk about that.” The words felt bulbous and sour in his mouth.

“Mmm,” Niall hummed, still eating but not disagreeing.

“You met - kind of, I mean - you spoke to my sister, that day she came to find me at the barracks,” Luvander explained slowly, not really sure where to start. Rosie’s advice about how to handle the situation shone out in the depths of his mind like an illuminated guide-rope, something to hang on to which made the path seem less precarious. With no other option but the stumbling and flailing around in the darkness which had got him to this point in the first place, Luvander took it. “That’s Rosie. All my sisters are older, but she’s the youngest of them, number five.”

Niall whistled.

“Don’t even think about it,” Luvander pointed at him, and he grinned, took a huge bite out of the end of his second sausage and gestured at him to keep going.

“Rosie and me… we weren’t really quite like the rest of the family,” he said, choosing the words carefully like finding jewelled blackberries among the tough, under-ripe ones and the thorns at the beginning of September.

“Both cindies?” Niall asked, casual and simple as if it was no big deal because, Luvander remembered, to him it wasn’t.

“No, that’s just me,” he pulled a face to the side. Saying it out loud still felt like tying his guts in a reef knot and made him flinch away from the smack around the head he still anticipated. “Rosie just wanted more than the countryside, more than the small-minded way people are there, you know? She just hated getting her skirts muddy, wanted to live in the city. And,” he took a breath, pushed some of the cooling scrambled eggs around on his plate a bit, and muttered “she wanted to have me come and live with her in a place where I didn’t have to worry about getting lynched for kissing boys.”

“That doesn’t,” Niall frowned, “that isn’t - it’s not legal, Luv, you know that, right? That kind of thing got outlawed.”

Luvander shrugged, and put his plate to the side, no longer hungry. Immediately, he regretted it, wishing he still had something to do with his hands. He pulled the cuffs of his plum-purple sweater down over his wrists and tangled his fingers together in his lap, shook his head. “Amazing how accidents happen in the countryside,” he said softly. “Caught in the river weeds and drowned. Slipped under a carriage wheel in a bad storm. Took a tumble off the barn roof when he was mending the thatch. I don’t know where in the country Raphael’s from,” he shook his head sadly, “but it’s obviously somewhere with much more bourgeois residents than me.”

Niall looked stricken, and Luvander had to lower his eyes again to where he was pulling threads out of his cuffs. He didn’t want Niall’s outrage or pity right now, or ever, if he thought about it. All he’d ever wanted was to leave that place behind.

“I’m sorry,” Niall said again now, carefully cupping one of Luvander’s shoulders with his hand. “I didn’t know.”

Luvander mutely shook his head, then took a deep breath and went on. “Anyway, my family, they - I never got along well with them. Or they didn’t get along well with me. What I actually wanted to say was, I’m not - Midwinter presents are - kind of hard, for me, because I never really - and I just couldn’t, somehow. Open it. I’m sorry. I don’t know if I can. Don’t really deserve it, anyway, after how I treated you.”

“Hey, I was way out of line, telling everyone about us like that. I guess we should’ve talked about that sooner. If anyone deserves a little Midwinter cheer right now, it’s you.”

Niall held it out to him and Luvander grimaced a little, but then Niall said “please?” and Luvander took it with unsteady hands and fiddled with the ribbons until they came open. He stalled a little by finishing his hot chocolate, and Niall waited patiently, one elbow propped up on his knee, nibbling on some dates and tangerines he’d brought from the kitchen. At last, Luvander cleared the remains of their breakfast off the bed and slowly folded the wrapping paper apart to reveal a handsome navy blue scarf shot through with gold thread. Holding the fabric up to his face, he saw that there were tiny golden dragons embroidered in it, all of them wearing tiny golden scarves that fluttered in a non-existent breeze.

“I realise it’s a bit tacky,” Niall said, and it was probably the first time Luvander heard his voice waver with uncertainty. “It made me think of you when I saw it - not that I think you’re tacky, but - you do like, well. Scarves.”

“It’s perfect,” Luvander whispered, desperately willing his eyes to stop tearing up. He kept his head bent low and his hands wrapped in the soft wool of the scarf until Niall took them in his and rubbed his thumbs bracingly over his knuckles.

“Well, then,” he murmured, mouth quirking up into a familiar smile. “I think we can take a break from all the serious talking and maybe _I_ can unwrap _my_ present now.”


	17. Lesson Seventeen: A Case Of Cats And Pants

Raids continued, and the airmen settled into a way of life which was prickly but not uncomfortable. There were no other duties while they might be actively engaged at night. Routines established themselves, quirks and nuances becoming noted and known. Niall was usually first in the kitchen, unless he’d been on duty and the alarm had sounded. Amery’s shampoo was best given a wide berth after Raphael used it by mistake and couldn’t control the resulting slippery disaster of his hair for three days. Ivory’s piano was off-limits to everyone except him, not even Raphael touched it. Ace slept at strange hours and in strange places, Merritt ate toast more than he ate anything else; if you were nice to Evariste or he wanted a favour you could usually wangle some superior creamy porridge out of him in return. Ghislain and Magoughin played cards if they were indoors of an evening, anybody was welcome to join them but nobody was foolish enough if they were sober. There was no more sex in the common room, and Adamo declared the small, unassigned room which led off the main living space a private common room for entertaining guests. Officially, that probably meant family visits, but Compagnon christened it with a high-class whore the next day and if the chief had ever entertained any pretty illusions about what he was doing, they were shot down like a Ke’Han catapult under dragon fire.

The bathrooms created so many squabbles that a rota was drawn up for shower slots, expendable in the event of coming back from a raid colliding with sign-up slots, but otherwise theoretically sacrosanct. Niall and Luvander flouted it instantly by signing up for slots immediately after one another and sharing. Nobody bothered to challenge that unless they were also signed up for same slots.

Adamo also made it a rule that any airman wishing to share their bed was on no account to do so if he, or the person he chose to extend his hospitality to, was on that night’s rota. “Which is a fancy way of saying no fucking if we’re on-call, right,” Niall smirked when this announcement was made, stretching his arms above his head in his (clean) armchair and making the bones of his back click.

“Doesn’t seem fair for the poor bastards who can’t get any without the sympathy line of maybe dying later tonight,” Magoughin said thoughtfully. “But whatever you say, Chief.”

“Goes for all of you,” Adamo grunted, his arms folded fiercely across his burly chest. “I don’t give a rat’s arse who or what you take into your beds, so long as you’re the only one in it if your name’s on the board.”

So far, there had been a copious amount of penis-related articles, jokes and innuendo aimed at Luvander, and a semi-serious conversation with Jeannot when he had slung an arm around Luv’s neck and proceeded to wax unacceptable on why Niall was a truly terrible choice of boyfriend, but nobody had actually said or done anything truly malicious. Niall answered the cat calls and jibes with such customary lewd cheer that he wasn’t an entertaining target, whereas Luvander still jumped and stammered and had to remind himself he didn’t need to verbally shimmy his way out of anything. Raphael had taken to quoting raunchy and explicitly cindy poetry at anyone who said anything about his relationship with Ivory, as well as capitalising on the general consensus that he was a filthy romantic idiot by engaging in increasingly extravagant romantic gestures that seemed to make absolutely no impression on his boyfriend at all.

One chilled, dismal afternoon just as January was trudging into February with an unimpressive platter of sleet, high winds and black ice, Luvander decided it was past time he and Ivory caught up.

It wasn’t that they hadn’t talked at all since moving into the Airman, although it had started to feel like it. There had been a few pleasant kitchen exchanges, an evening on the sofa with Raphael and Ghislain when Raphael had cooked some sort of aubergine gratin crumbling with goat’s cheese and tiny, buttery nuts which apparently cost an obscene amount of money. They’d had snatched, brief conversations in the corridor, walked into town with some of the other boys one afternoon, and one night last week when Raphael and Niall had both been on duty and the alarm had sounded, Luvander hadn’t been horribly surprised to find Ivory clutching a mug of tea in the kitchen and failing to drink it not half an hour after they’d left. Luvander had joined him, but they hadn’t talked. They’d nursed their mugs and watched the sky. When Luvander, whose vision was keen in the first place and getting sharper every night he flew out, spotted the minutest flicker of what could have been mistaken for starlight through the clouds over towards the Cobalts he’d given Ivory’s shoulder a quick squeeze and they’d shared a mutual grimace, slipping back to their respective bedrooms to pretend they’d each slept right through that.

The chief could make all the rules he wanted about not going to bed with anyone when you were on duty. He never said anything about where you slept when you got back.

“Airman Ivory,” Luvander grinned when he finally located the other man, alone in Raphael’s room squinting over a piece of parchment. “Hello, stranger.”

“Have you come to pressure me for gossip about how romantic the contents of Raph’s pants are,” Ivory said without looking up. “Because I’m not playing.”

“You never play,” Luvander reminded him, helping himself to a seat in the little wicker chair Raphael had decorated with embroidered cushions and another knitted blanket. He arranged his limbs artistically and frowned at Ivory scratching with a pen at the parchment where he sat cross-legged on the bed. He was using one of Raphael’s books as a table. “Are you allowed to do that?” Luvander asked. “To that book?”

Ivory bared his teeth in something which might have been a grin, if you were short-sighted.

“What are you doing?” Luvander was determined not to give up. Niall had gone shopping with Ace and Merritt and Luvander didn’t feel like it in the miserable sleet; besides, he was saving the last of this month’s stipend to treat Holly and Aria to dinner at the weekend, hopefully. “Are you drawing? Can I pose for you, will you draw me like one of your Arlemagne girls?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Ivory said serenely. “What do you want?”

“Why, the pleasure of your warm and hospitable company, of course. What else?”

“Oh, I can’t imagine,” Ivory finally put down the pen and parchment, where he’d been writing something in a spiky, deliberate hand, and doodling what Luvander assumed were music notes. “Unless you want to know whether I play Raphael fast like a traditional Volstovic waltz or slow like a Ramanthine ballade too?”

Luvander balked. “Who asked you that?”

“Amery.”

“Did you cut out his kidneys before he even had time to scream?”

“What? No.”

“Sorry, that’s just… Mags said… never mind. So,” Luvander brightened as quickly as he’d been derailed, and clasped his fingers together around one knee, drawing it up to his chest. “How are _you_?”

Ivory raised an eyebrow and smiled wryly. “Fine,” he said curtly, and picked up Raphael’s book, flicking through it without really paying attention to it. Luvander wriggled around and managed to hold his tongue for about two minutes before clearing his throat.

“Aren’t you going to ask me how I am?”

“Nope,” Ivory grinned. “I already know you came in here because you’re bursting to tell me all about whatever sordid stunt you and Niall got up to last night. Not much point in encouraging that.”

Luvander huffed and pouted, once again re-arranging himself in the wicker chair so his legs were dangling off the armrest. “Now that’s simply untrue. I’ll have you know that I was on duty last night, so the only sordidness that anyone got up to was conducted alone.”

He watched as Ivory flopped back against Raphael’s pillows and stretched languidly, his hips straining off the bed in a graceful arch and his naked toes curling into the duvet. If Luvander wasn’t very much mistaken, Ivory was wearing one of Raphael’s linen shirts that hung loose and comfortable on him, and there was a blueish smudge of something that looked like a hickey peeking out from under the collar.

“You know, I wouldn’t object to hearing about some of the sordidness that you and your poetic disaster get up to nowadays,” Luvander purred slyly, picking up a discarded bookmark from Raphael’s night table and twirling it around his fingers the way Ivory liked to do whenever he was pretending that he didn’t know Raphael was watching. “You’re really chilled out now that you’re getting laid on a regular basis, did anyone tell you?”

Ivory, still submerged in a fluffy pillow cloud, scowled up at the ceiling and didn’t say anything.

“Come now, surely you can confide in a friend?” Luvander pushed. “What’s your secret? Is he really that good in bed?”

Ivory muttered something that sounded distinctly like “I wouldn’t know” and turned his head away. Luvander watched Ivory’s fingers play a restless little tune on the headboard for a while, until it finally clicked.

“Wait,” he said, surging up from the wicker chair and losing his sway over the bookmark, which fluttered merrily to the ground. “Are you saying you two haven’t…?”

“And just like that I have absolutely no desire to talk to you anymore,” Ivory said loudly and sat up as well. “How unusual. I do so love your insidious prying, normally.”

“Bastion, you really haven’t,” Luvander exclaimed. “ _Why_ , though? I mean, you’ve been sharing beds for weeks now, what could possibly have kept Airman “Wink and you can get it” Raphael from raiding your pants like a Ke’Han stronghold for _that long_?”

Ivory levelled him with one of his infamous unimpressed glares, but luckily, Luvander was by now quite immune to them, both in the sense of being intimidated enough to back off, and in the sense of awkward accidental boners.

“Oh dear,” Luvander whispered. “Can you not get it up?”

“Of course I can fucking get it up,” Ivory hissed, tossing a pillow at Luvander that hit him square in the crotch with more vehemence than he would ever have believed such a soft fluffy object capable of. Luvander bit down a whine and tossed it back, missing by a long shot and nearly hitting one of the teapots on the shelf next to the bed.

“Then what’s the problem? Can _he_ not get it up?”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” Ivory sneered.

“So you’ve witnessed him getting it up in _some_ way at least,” Luvander concluded, smirking and spreading his hands protectively in front of his delicate parts just in case there was another cotton projectile about to be launched at him. An angry pink flush appeared high on Ivory’s cheekbones, which was telling enough in itself, but then he grumbled a defiant “yes, if you must know, I have,” and Luvander had to bite down hard on his tongue to keep from cackling like a mad evil magician.

“So, what? He is clearly obsessed with you, he gets boners around you, you’ve obviously got a boner for him, at least mentally… what’s stopping you from bringing those two boners together and making sweet, sweet love like we’ve all been believing you were doing more or less every night already anyway?”

“I can’t just _ask him_ ,” Ivory exploded then, looking livid and spiky and supremely uncomfortable, like in the early days at the barracks when Luvander had still been mortally afraid of him. “I don’t _need_ -”

He cut himself off with a tiny, angry yelp, both hands fisted in the sheets.

“Well, if you don’t want to ask him _verbally_ , you could just - demonstrate?” Luvander suggested easily. “No big deal, just put your hand in his pants and you’re halfway there, honey.”

“Easy for you to say,” Ivory spat, and they were both quiet for a moment. Before Luvander could formulate an appropriately chastening yet unobtrusive reply to this, the door clicked open and Raphael stumbled in with sleet in his hair and bulging paper bags in his arms, humming some belated Midwinter carol under his breath and carefully stepping around the stacks of books that littered the floor of his room.

“Home, sweet home,” he sang, piling his shopping onto his already overcrowded desk and wiping a few errant strands of hair impatiently behind his ears. “Weather is abysmal, just like Ghislain said. Hello there, Luvander. Did you want some tea?”

He started taking out boxes of tea and lining them up on his desk - orange and cinnamon, spearmint and jasmine, some smoked black tea and a blend Luvander didn’t recognise. He picked the one with jasmine, since it sounded the most intriguing and looked the prettiest, and didn’t miss the way Ivory was still studiously staring at his feet.

“Hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” Raphael grinned, filling his kettle with water from a jug and manoeuvring it into the fire with deft hands. “You two looked like you were in the middle of something.”

“No,” Ivory said loudly, “we weren’t, Luvander was just about to leave. He can take his tea to his room. I’m sure he’ll get a warm welcome there, since you’re all back now.”

Luvander winked. “Yes, very… warm. Hot, in fact. Positively sizzling.”

Ivory shot him a dirty look, and when Raphael’s back was turned, Luvander wiggled his fingers at him and mouthed “ _hands, pants_ ” as he mimed putting his own hand in his pants. It didn’t take long for the tea to finish, and Luvander graciously accepted his and promised to bring back the cup as soon as possible, though he planned on doing no such thing, just in case Ivory decided to follow his advice for once when he and Raphael were alone again. First times were sacred, Luvander thought solemnly, and should not be interfered with, as much as he’d have liked an exclusive sneak peek at the action.

For now, though, he needed to go find his boyfriend, and distract himself adequately so he wouldn’t immediately share the unexpected delight of Ivory’s reluctant confession with the biggest gossip of the whole lot.

~

“Remember when we had sex in the Esar’s bathroom,” Niall said thickly into Luvander’s shoulder two nights later. Luvander had just come back from a raid with Magoughin and Ace and he was tired in his bones, as usual, but when he’d stumbled out of the showers and yawned his way down the corridor to bed, somehow or other he’d only made it as far as Niall’s room. He’d been bundled into a blanket and tumbled down onto the bed before he was aware he’d done it, and now Niall was murmuring sleepy things at him, coiled around him like a leechy spoon. “D’you remember, we heard Merritt giving Evariste head in the next cubicle, remember that?”

“Huh,” Luvander sighed, rubbing at his eyes with thumb and forefinger. His wrists hurt. “I’d forgotten that.”

“Never forget,” Niall grinned, and pressed his teeth against Luvander’s neck. “How could you even, it was almost the highlight of the whole evening.”

“Almost.”

Niall pinched his hip. “Anyway,” he continued, scooping Luvander closer and sliding one knee in between his. “I kind of assumed it was a one time party deal thing, you know? Surprise, I was wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Luvander’s interest was peaked, in spite of his exhaustion. When was his job going to get less exhausting, anyway? Ace and Niall and Jeannot and Magoughin came in from raids smoking and wired, the energy steaming off them. Amery and Compagnon and Evariste had even been known to go out and find whichever brothels were above the Mollyedge and still open at three, four, five in the morning, just to run some of it off. Twice now Niall had woken Luvander up at what felt like only minutes after he’d managed to go back to sleep after the alarm siren, snaking his way into Luv’s bed and kissing him hot and hard and vibrating; pinning his hands to the mattress beside his head and squeezing his fingers too tight; nudging his way in between Luvander’s knees and spreading his legs with the weight of his hips. Twice this had happened, and led to fierce, adrenaline-pumped fucking, Niall’s hips practically still in rhythm with Erdeni’s wingbeats on the attack. It was brilliant, exhilarating and exhausting and exciting all at once like the raids themselves, but Luvander could not work out where that rush came from. Apart from that first time, he considered himself doing well if he could walk in a straight line to the bathrooms once he’d said goodnight to Yesfir.

“I mean,” Niall sang softly against his earlobe now, stringing the words out like sticky toffee, “I heard them doing it again after you’d gone to bed. Almost broke the rules to come and tell you, it was that unexpected.”

“They were both out last night,” Luvander half protested, “maybe it was still… that…”

“Nah, Merritt’s like you when he gets in,” Niall said fondly, pinching Luvander’s hip again and burying his nose in the side of his neck for a second, breathing in deep. “All wobbly and slithering and sleepycute. Mmm.”

“Oh, I see,” Luvander yawned again and didn’t even try to hide it. “You’ve got a thing for men with weak knees.”

“Don’t talk about yourself like that,” Niall scolded him cheerfully, “you’re only weak at the knees because I’m fucking brilliant, who can blame you really. And brilliant at fucking, let’s be honest.”

“Do you fancy Merritt?”

“Don’t be weird,” Niall gave an exaggerated shudder, “that’s… no. Evariste does though, I heard him.”

Luvander wriggled back against him a bit and tried to clutch at the nagging thread in his chest which had been wanting to ask awkward questions for weeks. There were two things, he had learned, that he could honestly say he was extremely good at: flying, and pretending something troublesome in his life wasn’t there or didn’t need to happen, sticking his head in the sands outside Karakhum and letting the wind do its worst where he couldn’t see.

And then there were moments like this, where he was off-guard and half-asleep and comfortable, and for some reason he had yet to fathom those troublesome things appeared as words in his throat and got pushed up into his mouth. He could feel himself regretting them, could feel his tongue betraying him even the moment before it happened, but he couldn’t stop.

So “Niall,” he whispered, swallowing around the sound and picking limply at the sheet with two fingers that were still sore from the cold and Yesfir’s reins. “Do you still go and… well, with the others sometimes, and,” he sighed, pressed his mouth together but it was too late. Niall was poised and still behind him, waiting for the real question. “Do you still visit women?” Luvander whispered, and hated himself.

“You still visit yours,” wasn’t the answer he wanted, muffled against his shoulder.

“That’s different.”

“Why, because you’re in love with her?”

“I’m not,” Luvander frowned, and twisted his head to glance over his shoulder at Niall, whose face was suddenly too close, out of focus. “We never - you know it was a sham? I thought you - oh, fuck, I’m sorry.” The realisation of the delusion Niall had to still be labouring under regarding his relationship with Holly hit him like a dragon’s wing to the chest. He still saw her regularly, although he hadn’t been to the brothel since November. That had probably made it worse, actually, taking her out for tea on Sunday afternoons, taking her shopping for hair ribbons and brooches and, once, a little handkerchief she chose for Aria. “We were never - anything,” Luvander explained softly. “She just used to mess up my hair for show and I’d talk to her about you, mostly.”

“Of course you talked about me,” Niall said, but the cheery crest of his usual confidence wasn’t there, like his heart had gone out of the words and they were coming out of his mouth on reflex only. “I’m the best.”

“It’s only that,” Luvander muttered miserably, already missing the easy, loose-limbed way Niall had been holding him. He hadn’t let go, but his arms had gone tight, muscles bristling like body hair in the cold. “I just, I remember you saying you couldn’t… wouldn’t want to, I mean. You wanted to try everything, and so.” He stopped, swallowed, no longer tired with the weary ache of a raid; heavy instead with wishing he could learn to recognise when to shut up.

There was a pause, and Niall’s heartbeat against his back was a slow, familiar thing. Luvander tried to memorise it, his stomach curdling with the anxiety that he might have just made it unfamiliar all over again.

“Luvander,” Niall said then, a careful, low buzz still pressed up into his neck. “Are you trying to say you want me to be your exclusive, only man, off-limits to the rest of the world?”

The trouble with Niall was that delight and horror sounded almost identical in his mouth. It was a problem.

~

The by now very familiar shout of “MERRITT!” echoed through the building as the door slammed shut behind the last nightly stragglers. A small group of airmen had assembled in the common room, draped over the furniture and cheerfully emptying a bottle of wine that Jeannot had unearthed from somewhere, since none of them were on raid duty that night. The ones that were - Luvander, Magoughin, and Ace - and the ones that were still tired from last night’s had long since gone to bed. Ivory was mostly avoiding the wine, but he’d shared some of Raphael’s, and he was feeling cosy and affectionate, and had his head in Raphael’s lap.

There were footsteps, loud and drunk, and then Amery and Evariste spilled into the common room with their long limbs and their expensive leather jackets, collars turned up against the late January sleet. Merritt looked up, viciously chewing on his bottom lip, one of his legs jiggling restlessly from where it hung off an armrest, but otherwise looking resigned more than worried. He was used to Evariste shouting at him, after all.

Evariste pointed one finger at him and swayed on the spot. There was something bulging under his leather jacket, and if Ivory looked closer, the something seemed to be moving slightly.

“Mmmhere,” Evariste mumbled, lurched forward a few steps over to Merritt’s armchair and dumped the squirmy contents of his jacket into Merritt’s lap.

It was a cat.

“Little bugger,” Evariste said fondly, though no one was quite sure whether he meant the cat or Merritt. “Followed me home, he did. Clearly yours. He’s ginger, fidgety and annoying as fuck. Must be… be related to you.”

He slumped over the armchair, murmured a string of swearwords into the upholstery and stretched his hand out to pet the cat, which was wriggling around in Merritt’s lap and sniffing his fingers, though obviously not unhappy at where it had ended up. Merritt, looking stunned, swatted Ev’s unsteady hands away and peered at the newcomer with a frown.

“What the fuck,” he grumbled, “Ev. We can’t have a cat. This one probably belongs to someone, even. He looks far too clean to be a stray.”

Evariste laughed.

“What do you know about cats, Merritt? He’s - single, haha. No, don’t, I know that, because, Am and me see him every time we go out, don’t we, Am? Every time. And he treads on my fucking foot every fucking time and yowls at me like he’s the most miserable little fuck out there and wants me to take him here. He’s a fighter, that one. Bet he’d get along great with Vach.”

The cat had started to fidget itself into Merritt’s arms and half into the collar of his shirt. Ivory pulled on Raphael’s sleeve, pouting, and whispered “I want one,” because he _did_ , he missed his cats at home, and if Merritt could have one then so could he. Raphael smiled down indulgently and murmured something about waiting to see what the chief would do to the poor creature when he found out first, and Ivory went back to pouting.

“Fucking fuck,” Merritt said, but it was half-hearted, and so the cat stayed.

~

“Nooo, no, no,” Ivory said decisively when Raphael tried to steer him to his room. “Your room. I want to go to your room. S’better.”

“Mhmm,” Raphael hummed, “whatever you say, sweetcheeks. You’re tipsy, by the way.”

“Haha,” Ivory huffed against the dark red fleece of Raphael’s jumper, pushing his nose into his shoulder and trying to surreptitiously check that his feet were walking in a straight line. “Yes. Wine does that.”

“Interesting.”

“I want a cat, Raphael,” Ivory whined as Raphael unlocked the door to his bedroom and led them inside. “I want ten cats. Why does Merritt get a cat from Evariste and all I ever get is fucking flowers and poetry, you’re slacking off, Raphael, you’re supposed to be all romantic and reading my wishes in my eyes and shit.”

Raphael simply laughed and pulled him inside, closing the door by pressing him up against it and turning the key in the lock next to Ivory’s hip in a way that somehow made his thumb stroke along the length of Ivory’s hipbone. Ivory shivered and noticed that he was pushing himself against Raphael, back arching off the door.

“I’ll talk to the chief,” Raphael murmured into the little space between Ivory’s earlobe and his jaw bone before kissing down a trail to his mouth. “First thing tomorrow. Promise.”

They kissed like that for a while, lazy and lounging, their fingers idly tangling at Ivory’s sides and scraping across the wood of the door. Ivory hadn’t actually had a lot of wine, just a few sips from Raphael’s glass, and while his head had spun a little bit when he’d first stood up, he was starting to feel clearer again now, and very calm.

He was also hard.

It wasn’t the first time this had happened around Raphael, but it was the first time it was quite so noticeable, and quite so distracting, and when he put his hands on Raphael’s waist and tugged him closer, he could feel that Raphael was, too. Dimly, he remembered Luvander’s crude but potentially effective advice, and felt a thrill like he usually only did when he got a very difficult piece of music _just right_ when he realised that he was actually going to go ahead and try it. It’d sounded simple enough, how daunting could it be? He definitely had hands - currently teasing along Raphael’s waistband - and Raphael definitely had pants that Ivory could put those hands into.

He hadn’t meant to go about it quite so abruptly, of course, but then once both of his hands had made it down the front of Raphael’s trousers and pants, Raphael made one of his rarer noises - a good one, or at least it had been the last time Ivory had heard it, which was when they’d gone to a bath house after Raphael had had two nights of raids in a row, having taken Amery’s place when he’d been down with the flu, and Raphael had tried one of the really hot ones. Now that Ivory thought about it, it might also have been a noise of pain, and he hesitated a moment before Raphael bucked his hips up into Ivory’s cupped hands and caught his lower lip in a bitey sucking kiss.

“You’re doing fine,” he murmured, “don’t stop that, please.”

As Ivory tentatively rubbed the heels of his palms over Raphael’s erection, nestling his fingers in the warmth radiating off Raphael’s skin, Raphael kissed him again and teased the buttons of Ivory’s own trousers open with nimble fingers, humming encouraging sounds into his mouth. Just as Ivory had gathered up enough courage and momentum to wrap one hand around Raphael’s cock and stroke, Raphael did the same to him through the fabric of his pants, broad warm palm pressing flat on Ivory’s cock and holding him, sliding along the length with just enough weight to make Ivory sigh and break the kiss.

For once, Luvander’s advice actually seemed to be worth its salt.

Raphael let his fingers hook into the waistband of his pants and carefully pulled them down, tucking them under Ivory’s balls and then letting his fingers fan out again and wrap around his cock, giving it a few strokes before letting his thumb rub over the head. Ivory whined, pushing his hips up into Raphael’s steady grip, then realised that he hadn’t moved his own hand at all in those last few minutes, and tried to remedy that by jerking it up and down a couple of times and letting the fingers of his other hand caress and cup Raphael’s balls.

“Hnngh,” Raphael said, “easy there, I wanna savour this.”

His voice had dropped to a low, husky murmur, not unlike the way he sounded when he recited a particularly cherished piece of poetry, and Ivory whimpered as that sent another thrill down his spine and lost his rhythm again. Raphael let go of his cock, and Ivory accidentally banged his head against the door in frustration.

“Okay, hang on, I’ve got an idea,” Raphael said and gently pried Ivory’s hands out of his pants, which was so very counterproductive that Ivory had to pout. Raphael saw this and chuckled, raised Ivory’s hands to his mouth to place little placatory kisses along his knuckles, and tugged him over to the bed, where he swiftly took off his own clothes, grabbed something that had been shoved down between the mattress and the bedstead, and sat down.

“Don’t look so cross, now,” he mumbled, reeling Ivory in to kiss around one of his nipples and smooth one hand down the back of his thigh. “Just making this more comfortable for us.”

He looked up at Ivory then, eyes full of some admiring, melty golden fervour, and gave Ivory’s pants a questioning tug. “Can I take those off?”

“Okay,” Ivory found himself saying, mouth suddenly dry. This was much more intimate now than it had started out, and he wasn’t tipsy at all anymore, but he also didn’t mind when Raphael slowly undressed him, asking for permission before taking off each new piece of clothing, until at last, Ivory was standing naked before him, and Raphael merely studied him with one hand pressed down on his own cock as if to staunch his own desire.

“Come here,” he said at last, scooting back against the headboard and guiding Ivory into his lap so he was straddling him. He opened a small bottle of what turned out to be lubricant and coated his hand with it, then wrapped it first around Ivory’s, then around both of their cocks, stroking them slowly, and Ivory couldn’t quite get his head around how good it felt. It was always so much different when he did this by himself - awkward, cold, wavering between too much and not enough, and he usually gave up, unsatisfied, or else forced a weary, almost equally unsatisfying orgasm from his uncooperative body. Raphael’s hand was warm and strong and slick, and he made their cocks rub delicately against each other with the movement of his wrist, and Ivory, blindsided by these unexpected sensations, let his forehead drop against Raphael’s and only became aware of the small, needy sounds that came tumbling out of his open mouth when Raphael cupped the back of his head with his free hand and muttered “shh, babe, easy”.

Ivory swallowed hard and bit his lip, keeping his eyes firmly on Raphael’s hand between them, which then switched back to stroking only Ivory’s cock, though still at a leisurely pace. Ivory tried to return the favour with shaky fingers, but Raphael caught them with his other hand and pulled them off again, nuzzling the hair at his temple and humming with something that sounded like faint amusement.

“I’m really close,” he admitted when Ivory made a noise of protest, tangling their fingers and moving them out of the way. “I haven’t, in a while, ‘cause I can’t in the showers and you were always there on my nights off - not that I’m complaining - but. I don’t want to come yet. Want you to go first.”

He squeezed the hand around Ivory’s cock once and then sped up his strokes, until Ivory was reeling, barely aware that he was clutching Raphael’s shoulders hard, that he was making low, keening whimpers in the back of his throat that he’d never heard himself make before, or that he was bucking his hips in Raphael’s lap, until Raphael stopped again with a groan and slowed down.

“Ivory,” he murmured, insistent and breathless, “can I suck you off? Please?”

Ivory thought about this, trembling in Raphael’s grip, and nodded. He hadn’t exactly planned to go this far tonight, or any time soon if he was honest, but now that the opportunity presented itself and Raphael was looking so hopeful and reverent, he might as well give it a try. Raphael gently turned them both over until Ivory was lying on his back, propped up against the pillows, and Raphael was on his hands and knees above him, kissing and licking his stomach, his hipbones, the insides of his thighs.

“You are clean, aren’t you?” he murmured, his teeth grazing skin. Ivory had to hold his breath for a moment and clench his fingers in the sheets.

“I took a shower after dinner?” he said slowly, and Raphael laughed soundlessly with his mouth on the crest of his thigh.

“No, I meant - healthy. You use protection when you sleep with strangers and whores, that kind of thing. I am, by the way. At least I was the last time I went to get myself checked by the medics here, and I haven’t been with anyone since then. I mean, I’ll still use protection if you want me to, I just, with blow jobs, I like it better without.”

“Oh,” Ivory whispered, feeling tense and awkward again but trying to will his muscles to relax. For a moment, he wondered if it was naive to trust Raphael on this, but then he remembered that it was _Raphael_ , who couldn’t lie to save his life, and who _wouldn’t_ lie to him, not about something like this. “Yes, okay, me too.”

Raphael made a happy noise and placed a wet, sloppy kiss at the top of Ivory’s thigh before wriggling around on the bed until he was comfortable, nudging his legs apart so he could lick a hot, fat swathe up Ivory’s cock and suck the tip gently into his mouth. Ivory twitched and couldn’t quite contain the sound that was half-gasp, half-yelp, and once again Raphael stopped and peered up at him, looking concerned.

“Are you okay? Did I hurt you?” he asked quietly, fretful fingers kneading Ivory’s thighs.

“No,” Ivory forced himself to say, though he’d rather have stopped making any noises whatsoever tonight. He’d certainly never had this problem when masturbating. “I’m fine, don’t… it’s fine.”

He looked away, rubbing the back of his hand over the hot flush on his cheeks, but Raphael shifted further upwards and put his head briefly on Ivory’s stomach.

“Do you want to stop?”

“Gods, no,” Ivory whimpered, and pulled on a strand of Raphael’s hair, perhaps a bit harder than he deserved. “Don’t you dare stop.”

Raphael looked up at him and grinned, and he looked so pleased and attractive like this that Ivory had to bite his lip again. “Are you sure?”

Ivory permitted himself to raise a challenging eyebrow and took a deep breath.

“Get licking, Airman Raphael,” he said quietly, enjoying the pleasant jolt in his stomach when Raphael’s eyes widened and clouded over noticeably.

“Fuck,” Raphael said weakly, “I think I just came a bit in my pants.”

“You’re not wearing any pants,” Ivory felt compelled to point out, but then Raphael obediently got back to the task at hand, or rather, at tongue, and Ivory stopped caring about the sounds he might or might not make, because he was too busy working up to his first actual, full-scale, non-self-inflicted, _nice_ orgasm, with Raphael’s generous help.

~

“I,” said Luvander, later the same night, his mouth stuttering heavily over the syllable like wagon wheels on uneven roads. “No. Yes. Noyes. I mean. I do? Want you? To be that? But if you don’t - I mean it’s fine - I just wanted -”

“Mhmm,” Niall hummed smugly, gathering Luvander close and squeezing him so hard Luvander couldn’t breathe for a moment. “I see how it is. I mean, of course you want me all to yourself, who wouldn’t? Devastating good looks, wicked sense of humour, mad breakfast skills, even madder bedroom skills, what’s not to like?”

“Oh, I don’t know, vanity maybe?” Luvander grumbled, burrowing his face into the crook of Niall’s neck and mouthing small wet kisses along the collarbone.

“Pfft, whatever,” Niall smirked. “You love me.”

Luvander pressed his lips together and didn’t say anything to that, heart racing in his chest. He wasn’t ready for _that_ sort of admission yet - maybe ever - but Niall seemed to take it in stride.

“Luv,” he said, and Luvander allowed himself to enjoy the way the familiar nickname rolled off his tongue for a moment, nearly missing what came next. “I haven’t been with any women since Midwinter. Kind of lost the appeal once I could just slip into your bed whenever I felt like it instead.”

“Oh,” Luvander whined into Niall’s skin. He’d sort of known that. Well, he hadn’t _known_ that, but he wasn’t sure when Niall would have found the time to visit a whorehouse given than they’d been together most nights, trading giggles and cuddling even if they didn’t have sex. Extra body heat, Niall had kept insisting, was the best way to keep warm in winter. But January was only one month, and Niall might not have smelt like prostitute’s perfume or staggered home with that lopsided semi-sober just-got-laid grin in that time, but that wasn’t exactly what Luvander meant. “What about when you get bored of me though,” he whispered, ice in his belly and a desperate shape to the question in the warm, damp space between his mouth and Niall’s neck.

“Not likely,” Niall laughed. “Tell you a secret?” he asked, and didn’t wait for a reply, lolloping around and rearranging them so that they were chest-to-chest, his elbow crooked on the pillow and propping his head on his fist; other hand cradling Luvander’s right over his heart. “I get bored of women. Not because women are boring, not at all, but I get bored of the visiting and the same charade every time, the paying, the what do you want sir and how do you want it. Maybe I don’t get bored of women, maybe I get bored of whoring, I don’t know. I don’t get bored of you,” he ploughed straight on with the admission like a Crusher through a snow storm. “I mean, if I had one of the girls, lovely as they are - or even one of those lippy tight breeches city rent boys for that matter - if I had one of them come into my bed for spooning and pillow talk I’d feel cheated, you know? But you can sneak in any time and I love it.”

“So, but,” Luvander struggled, “is that because - isn’t that - do you mean because you don’t have to pay me?”

“No,” Niall tilted forward and pressed his mouth to Luvander’s forehead, making the words “you precious pineapple” right there before turning that into a squeaky little kiss. “No, it’s because you’re a constant fucking delight. I think the reason I wanted everyone to know, before, might be in case one of them tried to weasel their way into your pants, too, actually,” he pulled a face. “Wanted to stake my claim, you know? Sorry, that sounds completely objectionable out loud.”

“It doesn’t, actually,” Luvander whispered. “It’s… nice. In a weird, possessive, angry sort of way.”

“Yeah, you make me get all weird and possessive and angry,” Niall agreed. “And sad, when you stopped talking to me. And anxious, when you fly out - me, for fuck’s sake, I don’t get anxious. Look at all these terrible things you do to me, Luvander, I don’t know why I like you.”

“And a moment ago I was a constant fucking delight,” Luvander complained.

“Yes, there’s that,” Niall agreed, and reeled him in a fraction closer for a proper kiss. “And there’s your bum, obviously, and those noises you make when we’re fucking, all desperate and debauched and, mm, my favourite. Aaaaand your hands, I don’t know what the gods were thinking giving you hands that can do things like that, but every time you’re buttoning a shirt or tying your bootlaces or making a cup of tea it turns me on. Oh, also, you always smell like spring time, how do you even do that, and you’re so fucking adorable when you’re asleep, and you bring Yesfir treats and you’re not scared of Ivory, how even, and you’re just, you’re always so shiny and polished and put together and I look at you and I want to unwrap you like it’s my birthday, and - gods, it was your idea to have sex on the chief’s desk, and. Just. Why would I not want all of that.”

“Okay,” Luvander whimpered, “okay, I’m, I shouldn’t have asked, I’m, I mean, please stop.”

“Are you blushing?” Niall was definitely delighted this time - occasionally there were tells, and the way he was nudging his nose against Luvander’s cheek and reorganising the tangle of their fingers was one of them. “Does it make you uncomfortable to know how delicious you are?”

“Yesssss,” Luvander hissed, a whispery protest.

“Mm, good,” Niall grinned. “I mean, not good, it shouldn’t, because it’s all true, but if it means you’re going to get wriggly and cute and embarrassed and make me put my mouth on you to stop me talking then, good.”

“Ugh, Jeannot was right,” Luvander twitched on to his back and felt the dull nag between his shoulder blades which was telling him he had been awake and active far too long and why wasn’t he asleep now. “You are a terrible choice of boyfriend.”

“Jeannot’s got Ramanthine heritage, _terrible_ in the old tongue sounds so much like _excellent_ that it’s very easy to get them confused.”

“That’s not true,” Luvander started, but Niall had espied an opportunity to snake one of his hands down under the waistband of Luvander’s pants, which was all he was wearing since he had - as usual - forgotten to grab anything to get changed into after his shower. There was no point in leaving anything in the bathrooms ready for when he got home, Ghislain had tried that and found his pyjamas replaced with tiny, frilly, lady’s underthings when he came back from a raid last week. First rule of the Airman Handbook: never leave anything unattended in a communal space and expect it to be in the same state when you got back, unless it was Ivory’s piano.

“Mm, totally true,” Niall was purring, his fingers tickling along the crest of Luvander’s pelvis, digits dancing fairy-light with the fine hairs of his happy trail. “That’s why he makes such bizarre clothing choices. Also, he actually calls me your boyfriend, for real? Cute.”

“Everyone calls you my boyfriend.”

“Yeah, but,” Niall inched closer and dipped his hand lower. “In, like, a teasing, they-do-bumsex way, right? And sometimes a wistful wishing they got to do bumsex with either of us way, obviously, but. You know. They don’t think it’s real, do they? Or do they.” Two of his fingers tickled delicately at the head of Luvander’s cock, because he hadn’t been hard but then there was Niall. “What if it was real,” he whispered, making a loose, lazy fist and stroking down to the base. “What if I was your exclusive actual boyfriend and if any of them said something mean about it I’d have Ivory-style rights to stab them in the face. I think those two have got a point, you know, own the fact they’re boyfriends and they’ll still get teased but it can’t be used against them.”

Luvander wanted to wail things about how it was still Niall who had suggested they just have an arrangement all that way back, even if that had, after all, been because he really thought Luvander was in love with Holly. He wanted to erase and rewind this conversation altogether, go back to Niall telling him about Merritt and Evariste and mumble some sort of _whatever you say_ before drifting off to sleep with Niall wrapped around him like a cocoon. But he was spinning with tiredness from the raid and the hour, and Niall was slowly, gently jerking him off inside the same pants he had flown out in, and whispering things about being his boyfriend and Luvander did want that, even if he knew it was going to be a disaster the same way everything else he’d ever wanted had turned into a disaster if he got it.

Niall rubbed his thumb over the tip of Luvander’s cock and tucked himself closer, letting his thigh slip between Luvander’s legs and softly bumping his hips in time with his fist, so it was part hand job; part humping. “You can still see your girlfriend,” he murmured conversationally. “Just, don’t let her mess up your hair. If you know what I mean.”

Dawn was poking grimy pale fingers under Niall’s curtains already, and Luvander was thinking in circles, finding excuses to hand over a _no_ he didn’t actually want to give. He swallowed, felt his breath tight in his own throat, pushed himself closer into Niall’s hand and his hip; hid his face in his shoulder and whimpered “yes, okay, alright then, yes.”

“Score,” Niall grinned, kissed his hair, and sped up his hand.


	18. Lesson Eighteen: The Art Of Distraction

Merritt’s cat became a fixture of the Airman. It had no known name beyond the appellation of _Merritt’s cat_ ; whether Merritt had a name for it or not nobody seemed to know. Ivory changed his mind about wanting one - he still wanted one, but he didn’t think he wanted one _here_. Raphael pouted and mistakenly said “what about if I want a cat though” at a time when Magoughin, Ghislain and Ace could hear. The increase in jokes about Raphael wanting a pussy reached such a crescendo that Ivory got into a fight with Amery - not a real one, scratching and hair-pulling, mostly; hissing and knife threats, and when (to Ivory’s eternal shame) Niall broke it up, he announced that Ivory was clearly feline enough already, perhaps no more cats should be brought into the building at all.

Adamo refused to involve himself in any of this at all. It was easy to forget that he, too, lived in the Airman, with his room at the end of the corridor next to Jeannot’s. He didn’t mingle in the common room much, joining Ghislain and Magoughin for the occasional game of cards. He always cleaned them out, which Magoughin ruefully said was “commander’s prerogative, right? Got to defer to the higher authority, in other words we _let him_ win,” although he never made that claim when Adamo could hear him.

Once, Niall came skittering back to Luvander’s room empty-handed having slipped out to make breakfast, barrelling under the blankets like a ball set loose from a cannon and looking offended. “Breakfast’ll have to wait,” he’d grimaced, “Chief’s drinking coffee in the kitchen and no one else is up, I can’t make pancakes with him _alone_ in there.”

“Want me to come with you?” Luvander had offered, in spite of the shiver of trepidation that accompanied the thought of sitting at the kitchen table with Adamo drinking coffee and looking disapproving and trying to make small talk.

“No, it’s no good,” Niall shook his head. “He wouldn’t approve of my pancake batter song.”

Aside from post-raid debriefings in the early afternoons which followed any attacks, they were each regularly summoned to report on seemingly irrelevant things, too. “I swear he makes it up,” Evariste frowned one Friday after half an hour spent reporting to the chief sergeant on the necessity of flight goggles and whether they needed improving. “D’you think he’s bored?”

“Probably,” Amery agreed, “I mean the poor old man’s gone from organising all our training and plotting strategy exercises and games to get us half killed and then yelling when we actually get nearly half killed to… well. Sitting around waiting for the alarm bell to ring and, I guess, hoping we really don’t get killed. That’s a leap.”

“Next time he calls me in I’m going to report on how unacceptable it is that nobody’s managed to catch Jeannot asleep and shave off his infernal flirtbrow yet,” Niall joined in lazily, stretched out on the sofa with his legs trapping Luvander against the cushions. He was tired, which irritated him because he had no decent reason to be tired, and that was about as acceptable as Jeannot was in general, which was to say: not.

“You want to be careful, Jeannot might come back and report on how unfair it is that they didn’t put soundproof walls in this place so we all have to listen to you two squealing every night,” Amery shot back.

“Aww, jealous, Vallet?” Niall smirked. “It’s been - what - three nights since you got laid? And how long since you got it from someone just because they liked you? Oh, shit, my bad, no one likes you, so that’s never.”

“Don’t be grumpy,” Luvander murmured, patting Niall’s knee and trying to concentrate on the latest book Raphael had forced on him, gibbering something about witches and fairies and enchantments and Luvander would love it. Luvander did love fairy stories, but trying to read in the Airman common room was like trying to find a virgin in the ‘Versity, and if he was alone in his room it was because he was on duty and, therefore, lacking the necessary concentration.

“Mm yeah, don’t be grumpy,” Amery threw a balled up sock at Niall - probably Compagnon’s, he was always leaving dead laundry around the common room. So far it had been collected up and bundled lumpily inside his pillow case by Magoughin, hung up like bunting by Evariste, thrown out of the window on a terrifically windy afternoon by Ace, and repeatedly thrown at Compagnon’s head by everybody. He hadn’t stopped, though. Ivory had suggested making holes in one of each pair of socks and then putting them tidily away in Compagnon’s wardrobe, but in the mean time his abandoned articles were floating around and being used as projectiles, dusters and, on one occasion, sock puppets for an impromptu rendition of _That Time Tycho The Brave Met Some Nymphomaniacs_ , a Magoughin and Amery original. “Listen to your wife, Niall, you know being in a relationship isn’t just about getting laid on the regular right, it also means you have to behave yourself in polite society.”

“Ain’t nothing polite about you, Am,” Evariste chimed in before Niall even had the chance.

“Has anyone overheard Raphael and Ivory making stabby knife sex in the library yet?” Niall complained. “Because I don’t think they’re playing the game, me and Luv have to provide all your entertainment and that is a lot of performance pressure.”

“Oh, you should have said,” Amery sang, “if you’re having trouble _performing,_ I’ve heard there’s an exiled lady Margrave on the edge of town who’ll sell you a tincture that’ll sort that out. Costs a bit but it’d be worth it, right? Got to keep your man well serviced.”

“I’m right here,” Luvander reminded him crossly.

“Just looking out for your best interests,” Amery shrugged.

“You haven’t heard about an old witch, Amy,” Niall scoffed, “you know about her ‘cos you’ve been to see her. I told you, too many hens spoil the cock, you need to spread yourself thinner. Or just spread, actually, try harvesting the --”

“Niall,” Luvander said warningly, pinching his knee and still not looking up from Raphael’s book.

“Ugghh, as if you care about Amery’s feelings,” Niall flopped sulkily away from him and flounced up into a ball in the corner of the sofa, finding another one of Compagnon’s socks under his leg and tossing it disgustedly at Amery. It hit him with a soft thwack between the eyes. “Wish I was on duty tonight, I really feel like burning some shit down. I hate everything. I’m going out.”

He stomped back four hours later with a headache and a box of biscuits which he shoved into Luvander’s chest with a growly “for you, fuck off, don’t say thanks” and went to bed.

“Probably manstruating,” Ghislain told Luvander cheerfully, patting him on the head and then using the unfair leverage of his stature to keep his hand there and steer Luvander back into the kitchen. “Means you’re free to share this spiced rum Mags just hauled in with us, we’re going to play darts, Ace is in too. You can’t say no, I’ve got my hand on your head, that’s the rules.”

Niall’s bad mood was so alien and confusing that Luvander didn’t even try to fight. In any case, there was something rather shiveringly delightful about having Ghislain touch him and insist upon his company, like he’d been chosen; singled out. Luvander closed his eyes for a second and then agreed, and caught his breath when Ghislain’s fingers gave his head a tiny massage without letting go. “We can eat these biscuits, too,” he suggested, peering at the box Niall had shoved at him. Chocolate caramel.

Luvander only knew how to win at darts if he cheated, and he didn’t remember how to cheat when he was drinking Magoughin’s spiced rum. It slid down his throat like pepper and honey, making him cough until he needed another swig. Eventually Ghislain had to deliver him back to his room, and Luvander fell asleep face down on his bed without getting undressed. He dreamed about chocolate caramel cookies that lived on the edge of town and sold old socks to witches who couldn’t have sex.

In the morning, significantly less hungover than he anticipated or deserved to be, he made two bowls of porridge using Evariste’s fancy oats and garnished them lavishly with some cherry compote and sweet-smelling spices he found on Raphael’s shelf. Balancing them on a tray with tea that was actually his own, he let himself into Niall’s room hoping that yesterday’s bad mood had gone down with the sun. Strictly speaking, nobody was supposed to have a key to any bedroom except their own, but what the chief didn’t explicitly know, Niall had argued convincingly when they’d been in the market and spotted the silversmith’s stall last weekend, he couldn’t make rules about. And it simply wasn’t safe to go to bed with an unlocked door.

Niall’s room was still dark, curtains pulled tight across the window. The light from the corridor when Luvander opened the door revealed a trail of grumpy destruction to the bed, boots and clothes kicked across the floor every which way; Niall’s coat dumped unceremoniously on his chair. He didn’t actually own an enormous amount, his room was emptier than Luvander’s now that they had money and Luvander had been able to spend it on trinkets and decorations. “Are you awake?” he called softly into the gloom, closing the door behind him and hoping that he didn’t trip over anything on his way through the debris of Niall’s bad mood. “I made breakfast.”

“Why,” Niall moaned into his pillow.

“Thought it might cheer you up,” Luvander perched on the edge of the bed and set his tray down on the night stand, fidgeting his fingers under the edge of the blankets and tickling Niall’s neck. “What happened to you yesterday?”

“Nothing,” Niall complained, and then sat up abruptly in a flurry of bed linen, exasperation and pouting. “I’m fine, I’ve just got a cold and I hate it, feeling ill makes me feel pathetic. It’s _fine_. Did you go drinking without me?”

“I didn’t _go_ drinking, exactly, no.” Luvander shook his head, and fanned his fingers out across Niall’s forehead. “You’re really warm, I don’t think you should be on duty tonight. Want me to tell the chief?”

“No,” Niall scowled, “I told you, I’m fine, it’s just a cold. I’m not going to pansy out of work because I’m a bit sniffly.”

“Hm,” Luvander pushed a mug of tea into Niall’s hands and decided it was safer to be non-committal right now. “Well, you’re going to have breakfast. Feed a cold, and all. Porridge was a good choice, we used to give the horses oats in winter to keep up their strength. Eat up.”

He didn’t anticipate a summons into Adamo’s command room halfway through the afternoon when Niall had grouchily conceded to have a nap after a morning spent sulking about sneezing and having tiny rants every time he coughed. Luvander didn’t like being summoned into the chief’s office. It felt ominous, a brown sense of foreboding filtering the room.

“Sit down, Luvander,” Adamo instructed, and Luvander perched uncomfortably on the edge of a chair. He felt like he was back in school, waiting to be told he wasn’t good enough again.

“Chief?” he asked tentatively, when Adamo didn’t say anything more. He sat frowning at the papers on his desk, his hands steepled in front of his face.

“Tonight’s rota,” he said abruptly. “I’ve put Merritt on instead of Niall.”

“That’s… good,” Luvander agreed cautiously, uncertain as to what this had to do with _him_ , exactly. He wasn’t on tonight’s rota. “Good idea.”

“I know it is,” Adamo nodded. “Niall doesn’t agree.”

“Ah,” Luvander said, eloquent and helpful in his lack of surprise.

“I’ve got a special assignment for you, Airman Luvander,” Adamo sat back in his chair and grinned in a way Luvander wasn’t sure he entirely liked.

“Sir?”

“You’re aware that Airman Niall takes a certain delight in, shall we say, bending the rules.” Luvander felt his cheeks turning pink - was this about the spare bedroom keys? Or had the common room incident not been forgotten? Perhaps Adamo had found out about his office back at the barracks… and just like that, pink was no longer an adequate descriptor for the colour Luvander could feel his face flushing. Cerise, maybe. Freshly sliced beetroot. Prize plum. “I’m under no delusions that if the alarm goes tonight he’ll suit up even though I’ve told him not to,” Adamo continued regardless. “Your mission - let’s call it an extra curricular - is to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“Um, how?” Luvander blinked. “I mean - do you, how do you want me to do that, sir?”

Adamo shrugged, his mouth pulling wryly sideways. “However you deem most effective. Be in his room and make sure he stays put.”

“You want me to… break… your room rules?”

“Technically,” Adamo reminded him, “I’ve taken Niall off tonight’s rota so you’re perfectly well allowed to be in there. However, that’s not relevant, because I’m ordering you to be there regardless. Nice thing about making the rules, Airman, you can break them whenever you fancy. Now, are we clear?”

“I’ll flout regs and be in Niall’s room so he can’t go raiding,” Luvander nodded, managing to tuck his smirk in at the corners so it wasn’t completely insubordinate. He wondered if, afterwards, he’d be able to refer to this as that time Adamo expressly ordered him to sleep with Niall. Operation Distraction Sex. Private Raiding Party. “Yes, sir.”

~

Ivory managed to avoid speaking to Raphael about what had gone down - literally - that night Evariste had brought Merritt’s cat in for almost a week. He’d slipped out the next morning while Raphael was still dozing in a sleepy scrunch of blankets on his side of the bed under the pretence that he was meeting his brothers at the market for breakfast, which wasn’t technically a lie, except he was meeting them for lunch, and he spent the morning ambling down the Rue by himself and enjoying some early sunshine that was peeking out between grey clouds. He felt rejuvenated and exhausted at the same time, calm, like Luvander had accused him of being even before he’d slept with Raphael for real, and there was a tiny spark of peppermint warmth in his guts every time he remembered the way Raphael had let him fuck up into his mouth the night before, how he’d seemed to _like_ it, how he’d slipped his hand down to his own cock to jerk himself off as Ivory had arched up a final time and come in his mouth. As a result, he arrived at the café with rather flushed cheeks and glazed eyes and had been distracted all throughout lunch, which, of course, his brothers had instantly picked up on, and interpreted for once correctly, much to Ivory’s chagrin.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Maxwell had said, pointing his fork at him and squinting, “I’m happy you’ve finally worked through that whole gnarly _feelings are icky and wrong_ mess you had going on there, but if that Raphael boy is touching my baby brother in the pants on a regular basis now, I’m going to have to have another talk with him soon.”

The way he’d clucked his tongue around the word _talk_ had been nothing short of ominous.

That night at the Airman, everyone had been far too aggravated by Niall’s explosive bouts of restless stomping about and complaining about his cold to stick around, and Raphael had been collared by Amery to accompany him and the others to the pub while Ivory slipped away to the blessed cool silence of his own room. Raphael had thrown him a desperately apologetic look over his shoulder as he was being dragged outside, and Ivory had made a point of smiling at him to reassure him it was fine.

The next few days, he’d been careful to only interact with Raphael when they were surrounded by other airmen who could easily overhear their conversations, and although he’d caught Raphael staring longingly at him every now and then, Raph didn’t press the issue, and neither did he insist on sharing a bed on the two nights that neither of them was signed up for a raid when Ivory made no indication of wanting to. Ivory was glad, because the mere thought of Raphael smirking his way into his pants again and, even worse, commenting on his performance the last time - if it could be called that - sent hot, prickly shivers of discomfort down Ivory’s spine. It wasn’t that he hadn’t enjoyed it, or that he didn’t want to do it again, because he did, but he was well aware that Raphael was a talker and would no doubt want to discuss things the first chance he got, and Ivory wasn’t sure how to signal to him that he would like a repeat of that night, much less communicate anything more complex than that in words.

In the end, it was his own fault that it happened, because he came to Raphael’s room on his own on the third night they were both off the rota, after tossing and turning in his bed for an hour and feeling uncharacteristically lonely. There was still light under Raphael’s door, probably because he was reading, and when Ivory knocked a tentative three times, it only took a few seconds for Raphael to unlock the door and let him in.

“Hey,” Ivory said nervously, slipping in and waiting until Raphael had turned the key again.

“Hey yourself,” Raphael said, half a smile perching on his lips and his hair in sleepy disarray. There was a book lying face-down on his bed, and Raphael picked it up and moved it gently out of the way before sitting down and patting the mattress next to him. “What’s up?”

“Nothing,” Ivory mumbled as he lowered himself next to Raphael. “Just wanted to…”

He waved his hand around vaguely, not quite managing to say what it was he’d wanted: to see Raphael, to be with him, to sleep with him. To - _sleep_ with him.

Raphael tucked a strand of hair behind Ivory’s ear and kissed him high on the cheekbone. “Missed you,” he murmured against Ivory’s skin.

“Can you do that thing again,” Ivory blurted out before he could stop himself. “Or I could, this time, I mean - if you want. That.”

Raphael looked confused for a moment, then the corners of his mouth snagged in a gentle smirk.

“ _That thing_ ,” he echoed, “let’s see. Are you talking about me jerking you off or are you talking about me _sucking_ you off or are you talking about something else? Because, yes, I can do that again, but I need to know what exactly it is you want me to do again, now don’t I.”

“Both,” Ivory said, flustered, squeezing his fingers in a tight cage around Raphael’s. “The latter. The - mouth. With your mouth. I liked. That.”

“Course you did,” Raphael grinned, and pulled him in to kiss the tip of his nose before whispering: “Let’s get you out of those clothes, then, Airman Ivory.”

~

Miraculously, Luvander managed to avoid catching Niall’s cold himself. He was peculiarly smug about this, the more so in the face of Niall’s black treacle mutterings about incubation and just waiting until he got caught in a rainstorm next time he was flying because surely that would activate it.

It didn’t. Winter was finally beginning to slither wetly into something that looked like spring, the Kiril cherry trees which lined the Rue de St’Difference unfurling in a thousand teardrop petals the same blush pale pink as Merritt’s cat’s paws. They littered the cobble stones and turned almond brown in the rain. Snowfall had ceded to unpredictable showers of rain (“unpredictable,” Ghislain had been heard to scoff in the kitchen over toast that was so cooked it was more charcoal than bread, “only for amateurs.”) Night raids were still officially the order of business, but the alarm siren was going off less and less frequently, and Adamo had actually started sending them up on strategy flying exercises again when the weather was dry, to keep both dragons and airmen from rusting or brawling.

And then, just like that, the raids were off and the war was silent again for gods knew how long, and the airmen were being assembled to be told they had a month’s leave to do with as they pleased. Most of them had some kind of family to visit, who had missed them over Midwinter and were anxious about their sons’ welfare, sanity and whether they were being lied to about them still possessing all their limbs. Family visits to the Airman had been scarce and not encouraged while the raids were frequent.

Adamo announced the news of their furlough like the portents of doom, impressing on them all the warnings that there would be Severe Implications for any airman caught misbehaving just because he was on leave. (“He only said if we’re _caught_ ,” Niall whispered to Amery, “not that we shouldn’t misbehave at all. Old man’s getting wise.”) Their uniforms and flight gear were not to be taken off site, but if anyone wanted to exercise his dragon during the down time, that could be arranged.

“Are you staying here?” Niall asked Luvander after the announcement, worrying at the edge of his sleeve with his thumb. “Just, you said about your - and…”

“I’ll go to Rosie’s,” Luvander said easily. “It’s fine. She’ll have to let me meet her husband though, who is apparently charming and handsome, so you might have some competition.”

Niall growled, and that was the end of that conversation for a long while. In fact, they were so busy saying goodbye to each other for the next few days that it was the end of that conversation until one and a half weeks into Luvander’s stay at Rosie’s, whose husband was indeed charming and handsome as advertised but nowhere near as charming and handsome as Niall and thus did not constitute any sort of competition at all, though Luvander had perhaps neglected to mention this last bit in his letters to Niall. Who, at the end of those one and a half weeks of Luvander catching up with his sister, eating three home-cooked meals a day and ambling along the Rue to look at the newest trends in hat fashion, was standing below the guest bedroom window in the pouring rain and loudly threatening to climb up the sparse ivy covering the side of the house if he didn’t get to talk to Luvander _now_.

“You know,” Luvander told him as the four of them were seated in the small dining room with steaming cups of hot chocolate and Niall was towelling his hair dry, “you could have just tried the doorbell first before violating Rosie’s poor ivy.”

Niall made a small fart noise underneath his towel, then emerged to gingerly feel around the bruise on his elbow from falling down and landing in gravel. “Ringing the doorbell is not a grand romantic gesture, Luvander, come on.”

“Why _did_ you feel the need for a grand romantic gesture,” Luvander asked drily, still feeling uncomfortable talking about the fact that he had a boyfriend in front of Rose’s husband even though he and Rose had had a long chat about this and her husband had yet to bat a single eyelash at the mention of it.

Niall clicked his fingers at the question and sat up straight. “Right! So. My mother wants to meet you, we are going out for dinner with her tonight. No need to wear outrageously fancy clothes, though she might be fond of that dark red scarf you have, and maybe one of your waistcoats…”

He winked, and Luvander felt a peculiar sort of warmth in his belly, because he was well aware that it was Niall himself who was fond of his waistcoats and dark red scarf, not least because of what Luvander had done with it that night Adamo had ordered him to keep Niall from going out on a raid, but then Niall’s words caught up with him and the warmth was stamped out by a squall of cold, clammy panic.

“Meet… your… mother?” he squeaked, mouth suddenly dry and furry like he’d eaten too much of Rosie’s rhubarb pie. “Tonight?”

“Yes, yes, tonight,” Niall said cheerily, “I knew you would take it badly so I didn’t give you advance warning. Actually, you better get ready now, or we’ll keep the carriage waiting… thought I’d splurge on a bit of luxury and all you know, it’s been a while since I was able to take my mother out in style.”

He kissed Rosie’s hand and shook her husband’s, apologising again for any damage done to their ivy and promising to pay for it despite their good-natured protests that they had never liked it anyway since it obscured the downstairs windows, and then shepherded a still panic-stricken Luvander up the stairs to his bedroom so he could “help” him get changed.

As it were, he did help in some ways, though they did end up being late for the carriage anyway, despite or perhaps because of Niall’s best intentions.

~

Ivory had three days to Do A Thing about making sure that Raphael wasn’t going to go and hunt out that farm girl from his distant past for some more licking shenanigans while he was home on leave. The trouble was, he had yet to work out what that Thing he was going to Do might be, exactly. He knew - roughly - what his options were. He just didn’t know whether he was capable of carrying any of them out.

Since the night when Merritt had gained his cat, Ivory had slipped into Raphael’s room for what he had come to privately refer to as _hands in pants time_ seven times. It wasn’t a score he would have been proud to share with Luvander, but then Ivory didn’t want to share it with anyone at all, preferring to tuck tight in his pockets this knowledge of his own small success and the sliver of self-accomplishment that he was doing intimate things with another human and it wasn’t a complete disaster. Never mind that six out of those seven times had been all about Raphael putting his hands - or his mouth - on Ivory, and Ivory failing spectacularly to reciprocate to the same degree or result.

Never mind that, apart from the fact that it was precisely that which made him anxious about their time on leave.

It wasn’t that he didn’t _want_ to do those things to Raphael, too. There were nights when he was in his own room listening anxiously for the raid siren and pretending he was going to sleep until past time for it to reasonably go off, when Ivory closed his eyes and pressed his lips together and imagined what it would be like to wrap his fingers around Raphael’s cock and slowly, delicately, wring out an orgasm with just one hand. There were afternoons he sat at the piano and swirled tunes from memory, dust motes spinning lazily in the spring sunshine that drifted across from the open window opposite, daydreaming about how Raphael would feel in his mouth. Whether his cock would taste similar to his mouth. How Ivory might fan his long fingers out flat over Raphael’s hipbones, spread his legs a little wider and force him not to buck. He’d open his fingers on the piano keys as he thought about that, and the chords they found became synonymous in his mind with the breathy, desperate noises he imagined Raphael might make.

The one time he had managed to get Raphael off had been almost accidental, a quiet night after a particularly heavy raid. Neither of them had been up, but Magoughin, Evariste, Amery and Niall had come back boneless and mute, chilled and smudged and bruised; none of them volunteering a word on the subject. All the boys had been a bit shaken, and Raphael and Ivory had spent the afternoon drinking tea in silence in Raphael’s bedroom, watching the sun sink blood-red and swallowing the sloping city rooftops like an angry, hungry maw. They sat on the bed and held hands, and neither of them said anything about how godless and clawlike war could be when you were the ones fighting it without ever having intended to be.

When they’d gone to bed and Raphael had been clingy and affectionate, Ivory had let him; had kissed him with a promise between his lips, that they were in this for a reason even if that reason was each other. There hadn’t been any of the usual smirking and teasing and questing into underwear. They’d rubbed and shifted against each other until they’d both come without even taking their pants off, but Ivory’d had one hand in the back of Raphael’s when they got there so he told himself it counted.

So, three days.

Ivory started the first of those three days feeling confident and entertaining grand fantasies about seducing Raphael in the little tool shed that was tucked away around the back of the Airman building where the walls made a strange twist and the footpath leading to the staff entrances petered out into rocks and sand. It was a calm, blissful hideaway that Ivory had discovered only recently, the only sounds that could be heard there were the faraway sea and the wind tossing and turning down the slope behind the building where the dragon pens opened out into the sky. It would be a good place to push Raphael up against a wall, pull down his trousers with his teeth and find out exactly what he tasted like, and Ivory was pleased with this plan and in a good mood until around lunchtime, when Amery announced he was going back to the brothel one last time tonight before their leave and anyone who wasn’t a complete bore could come with him, and Ivory remembered once again that Raphael was used to a standard of oral care that Ivory with his droll ideas about tool sheds and frantic licking probably couldn’t even dream of.

After that, the first of the three days passed with Ivory barely speaking to Raphael and playing increasingly violent piano as he worried whether Raphael was going to go with Amery or not, and then feeling silly and maudlin when Raphael stayed in with a book all night and Ivory still didn’t have the guts to crawl into his bed and distract him from his literary endeavours.

On the second day, Ivory was determined not to make the same mistake again and managed to sneak over to Raphael’s room in the wee hours of the morning without being seen, but then forgot about his mission when Raphael pulled him into bed, disappeared under the blanket, and put his mouth to Very Good Use Indeed. While Ivory’s memory returned soon after, he was far too sleepy and content to pursue any of those plans he’d harboured on the way over, and far too quickly it was the last day before they were both going back to their families, and Ivory felt something similar to heartburn at the thought of Raphael rolling around in the hay being pleasured by a faceless, ample-bosomed country beauty while Ivory was too far away to do anything about that.

Too angry with himself, Ivory went to bed alone that night, and nearly stabbed his pillow in fright with the closest knife within reach when there was a knock at the door a little past midnight.

Warily, he unlocked the door to a sheepish Raphael clad only in shorts and a soft, lopsided linen shirt with the top buttons undone. There was some loose laughter drifting out through the closed door of the common room and tiny strips of light peeking out from some of the bedrooms, but the corridor was empty, and Ivory felt a tug of longing as he stepped aside to let Raphael in.

“Alright?” Raphael said almost nervously as his steps faltered somewhere between the door and the bed. “You weren’t asleep yet?”

“No,” Ivory said, “just dozing.”

He locked the door again, took a long, silent breath, and wrapped himself around Raphael from behind, hands coming to rest over his lower belly, pointing downwards like hopeful arrows.

“You’re going home tomorrow,” Ivory said uselessly as Raphael sighed and leaned into the embrace. Slowly, deliberately, Ivory put his mouth on Raphael’s neck and sucked until the skin looked red even in the gloom of his bedroom. He could feel Raphael’s sharp intake of breath more than hear it and tightened his hands, pushing at Raphael’s waistband with the tips of his fingers.

“Hmm,” Raphael finally replied when Ivory refused to elaborate, “we’re both going home.”

It was almost a question, and Ivory let his teeth graze the top of Raphael’s spine before he said: “You might forget about me while you’re there. I don’t like that.”

This time, Raphael hissed audibly and shivered as Ivory bit down on his neck again. There was some feeble protest that that wasn’t ever going to happen, but Ivory found that sliding both of his hands into Raphael’s shorts made short work of that, and even Raphael’s half-hearted attempts to grab some part of Ivory and turn things around once again were rather hindered by their fortuitous position, which Ivory felt quite pleased about.

“No floozy, licky farm girls while you’re away,” Ivory murmured into the wing of Raphael’s shoulder blade as he curled his hand around his cock and squeezed tight. “No mouthy stable boys or bouncy barnyard breasts or… whatever it is you did before.”

Raphael whimpered, his hands now clenching and unclenching in the air somewhere above Ivory’s wrists, hips tilting forward and head falling back onto Ivory’s shoulder. Ivory started jerking him off in a slow, squeezy rhythm, and Raphael moaned.

“No, none of, no,” Raphael whispered, the words coiling hotly behind Ivory’s navel, and Ivory growled “good” and sped up his hand and had a feeling he was doing quite well for himself when Raphael straightened up again and wrapped a hand firmly around Ivory’s wrist, stopping him.

“Ivory,” he said, in a low, treacly midnight voice, and turned his head to the side so he could look at him in the glistening moonlight dark. “I want you - want you to fuck me. Would you?”


	19. Lesson Nineteen: Home Discomforts

Niall’s mother hugged him.

The entire carriage ride had been a squashed up sweat of Luvander fretting and nearly pulling several buttons off his waistcoat, alternating between pleading with Niall to cancel or say he was sick or overturn the carriage and berating him for springing this trap, being so casual about it, having a mother and existing in the first place. Niall took all of this in stride, batting Luvander’s hands away from his buttons and smiling fondly and agreeing with everything: yes, this was a disaster waiting to happen, yes, Luvander was a terrible mistake and Niall’s mother was going to hate him on sight, yes, this was clearly a ruse so that she could tell them both how perverted they were at the same time. Yes, Niall was a clot and a boil and a pox and yes, the world was going to end if they both went to this dinner. “You’re adorable,” he said when Luvander paused for an anxious, shuddering breath, and leaned over to kiss him softly on the mouth. “We’re here.”

“Nooo,” Luvander whined, but Niall only tugged his collar straight and opened the carriage door.

“Welcome to where I grew up and had all my formative disasters,” he grinned, offering Luvander his hand down the steps like some sort of fancy gentleman.

The house wasn’t fancy, but neither was it poor - somewhere in the depths of Charlotte’s labyrinth of cobbled back lanes, lined with slim trees sprouting fickle, feathery buds; pertinent little nibs of the leaves to come in a month or two. The front steps were clean and white, the door plain and painted airman blue; a single brass letter box and horseshoe knocker sitting calmly in the centre. Luvander felt displaced and wary, like he’d inadvertently wandered into enemy territory. He knew nothing about city streets and military familial etiquette; what he knew was stables and muddy boots, marching with the infantry, the Airman and Yesfir and not being noticed except when he was wrong. He knew nothing about mothers except that his own didn’t like him.

Niall asked the carriage driver to wait ten minutes, and led Luvander up to the door at a brisk trot. There were eight steps up from the street. Luvander counted. Niall let them in with a silver key he produced from the pocket inside his jacket, and Luvander felt his fingers sweating in Niall’s palm.

His mother was in the sitting room, wearing a long green dress and a dove grey shawl, her hair a cobweb of curls about her ears. She had Niall’s nose and his manner of smiling, with a gentle twist at the corner of her mouth which made it look like she was biting back a bark of laughter. Luvander squared his shoulders and pressed his teeth against his tongue, metallic and sharp, preparing himself for disaster.

And then Niall’s mother hugged him, and she smelled like apple soap and warm tree bark in summer, and she said “you must be Airman Luvander” in a voice that was as homely and welcoming as a log fire on a frosty winter afternoon.

“Y-yes ma’am,” he managed to murmur, staring helplessly over her shoulder at Niall, who had sprawled himself haphazard and louche across the sofa.

“Please,” Niall’s mother chuckled, “it’s Eileen. Now then,” she put her hands on his shoulders stepped back to scrutinise him at arm’s length. “Let me look at you.”

Luvander immediately felt himself turning pink and straightened his back self-consciously, determined that she was bound to find fault in something. His father had always said he didn’t stand tall enough, and his mother would sigh and shake her head, muttering miserable things about how skinny Luvander was. Eileen’s eyes narrowed, and he braced himself for whatever shortcoming she had spotted with her critical parental eye.

Except “very handsome,” was all she said, patting one shoulder and smiling.

“Of course he is,” Niall drawled lazily, swinging his leg over the arm of the sofa. Luvander wanted to hit him and hold him all at the same time - which was an alarmingly common sensation around Niall, he had started to notice. “I told you he was.”

“Yes well,” Eileen raised an eyebrow and shot Luvander a comradely glance. “You talk a whole lot of shit too much of the time Niall, I learnt that long ago.”

Niall laughed, and sang “not this time” under his breath, winked across at Luvander and then stretched himself long and languidly like a sun drenched cat. “Have you finished being terrified yet Luv, and are you done pretending you’ve got good manners Mum? Because our carriage awaits.”

~

“Ivory?”

Ivory knew that he had blown it when he had let so much time pass without a reply that Raphael pulled his hands out of his pants and turned around to face him, looking worried. He let his arms drop by his sides and tried his best to look like he wasn’t still reeling with shock from Raphael’s completely unexpected _would you?,_ though he rather suspected he was failing spectacularly at this when Raphael’s eyes softened from shiny dark chestnut brown desire to hazelly concern.

“Sorry,” Raphael said, his voice a muted watercolour smudge on the blank canvas of Ivory’s stiff awkwardness. “I didn’t mean to rush things… is it, are you, am I right in guessing you’ve never been with a man?”

Ivory began shaking his head but quickly turned it into a nod. It was easier than making words right now, and there was no point pretending he was more experienced than he was if he then had to prove it, or at least explain his reaction some other way.

“Don’t worry,” Raphael hummed now, smiling and brushing stray hair out of Ivory’s face, “it’s not so different from doing it with a woman, and I can talk you through the bits that are… or if you don’t want to, that’s fine too, we can just keep doing this.”

“I want to,” Ivory quickly blurted out, because he knew exactly what it felt like to not want something, and this wasn’t it. And since Raphael had asked him like that, he must have been wanting it too, and somehow that thought made Ivory’s stomach tangle and twist like wool in a kitten’s playful paws, because even if he’d been pretending not to listen to Luvander when he was going on about the subject of sex, there were still some things he had learned without meaning to, and one of those things was that it could be enjoyable - being fucked in the way Raphael was implying.

“Are you sure?” Raphael asked, and Ivory nearly missed his usual cheekiness, though he appreciated that Raphael was taking his reservations seriously and didn’t push.

“Yes,” Ivory scowled, and then grudgingly added a quiet “tell me what to do?”

“Well,” Raphael said, his voice strangely contained, like he was suppressing a million different things, “first of all, we need some lube.”

“That,” Ivory swallowed, grimaced, and indicated his bedside drawer with a nod of his head. “I have - that.”

He didn’t have it from choice. Maxwell had sent him a parcel after the café, filled with lube, condoms, and a list of instructions on how to use both (and things which were not sensible alternatives to proper lubricant so don’t even bother). Ivory had said “gah” when he’d realised what the contents were, grateful that he’d waited to open the parcel until he was alone in his room, before quickly scrabbling all of it under his pillow, determining to dispose of it at the first possible opportunity. He could leave it subtly in Luvander’s room, perhaps, where there was a smorgasbord of that sort of thing already so it was unlikely he would notice. Or he could just throw it out the window. Or put it on Niall’s kitchen shelf. Anything, really.

Except somewhere deep in the filthiest layers of Ivory’s mind, the parts he had been studiously avoiding ever venturing into since he became aware they existed, was the tingling awareness that he might, maybe, perhaps, _want_ to need Maxwell’s gifts some time. And along with that came the horrible awareness that it would be dreadfully disappointing, both in literal terms and for Raphael’s opinion of him, if such a time arrived and Ivory was unprepared.

Such a time like right now.

“You have lube?” Raphael was saying, a little tweak of surprise catching the edge of his words and tugging his tone upwards, like he was surprised and a tiny bit amused.

“Yes,” Ivory frowned again. “Of course I have - in the - over there,” he flapped one hand pathetically in the direction of his bedside cupboard again.

“I see,” Raphael said with a honeyed smugness, which Ivory found both irritating and arousing. Raphael pressed a flat, hot-mouthed kiss to the side of his throat, before crossing the narrow space and tugging the drawer open. “Are you especially invested in keeping your bedsheets clean?” he asked, too coolly for the calm to not be fake. “Because I’m not opposed to doing this on the floor.”

“No, the,” Ivory blinked, shook his head, and cleared his throat. “The bed’s fine. Can we,” he grasped desperately for words, closing his eyes to try and see them clearer, “can we not talk about this like a medical procedure?”

Raphael laughed, heady and thick like syrupy fruit wine on a summer’s afternoon, the trickle of sound like the slow, sultry buzz of drowsy insects. “Sorry,” he whispered, spinning around and catching Ivory’s wrist with his fingers and pulling him three stumbling steps closer so they were chest to chest again. Raphael licked his lips and Ivory’s mouth went dry and his head span.

He put his hands on Raph’s hips to anchor himself, provoking a small, smudged hum of appreciation from the other man. Inspired, Ivory gave them a quick pinch, and Raphael’s fingers clenched around his wrist. “Bed, then?” he whispered huskily, drawing his lower lip between his teeth and curling his other hand around the back of Ivory’s neck, nudging his thumb across the curve of his jaw to tilt Ivory’s gaze up to meet his own.

“Yes,” Ivory said, breathless and dizzy and convinced. “Yes, bed.”

~

Dinner was sparkling and glamorous, at least by Luvander’s experience. The restaurant had heavy white table cloths and glittering silverware which caught the splinters of light thrown down from the brass chandeliers overhead. Their waiter wore a bow tie and inclined his head in a miniature mock bow at every request. Niall ordered them some very posh sounding Arlemagne wine and poured Luvander a generous glass which he drank far too swiftly. Niall had poured him a second one before their food had even arrived.

He kept waiting for Eileen to find some reason to disapprove of him, or for her to become disinterested in the answers with which he - haltingly, at first - responded to her cheerful questions. Surely she didn't really want to know where he came from or what flying was like (“Niall always says it’s like sex in the sky, but I’ve never had sex in the sky you see, so I need a more relatable comparison”). The entire situation was bemusing to Luvander - that Niall’s mother could be so fascinated and entertained by him, that she could happily sit at a table with them in public while Niall openly tangled their fingers together between the napkins and the silverware and even swooped in for a kiss on Luv’s cheek as he excused himself to the bathroom.

Luvander was too busy feeling awkward about that to register for a moment that he was now alone with Eileen.

“So, Luvander,” she was saying as the panic mounted in his chest like snowdrifts on a window ledge. “Now that it’s just the two of us for a moment, I need to ask you something. I know you’re obliged to tell me a certain amount of propaganda garbage with regards to this, but Niall always laughs outright and accuses me of _fussing_ and I just need to know - is it actually safe? Flying?”

Luvander knew he was supposed to say something mother-appropriate, something reassuring, but when he opened his mouth, he suddenly couldn’t lie to this woman who had been nothing short of kind and welcoming to him.

“No,” he said, “no, it’s really not - safe, that is. But then neither is riding a carriage on a busy street, or going off to war on foot. The way I see it, at least we’ve got dragons to mess some shit up when things get bad, and the Esar’s really not interested in turning us into Ke’Han cannon fodder when it gets down to it, you know?”

Eileen looked at him with her dark beady eyes for a long moment, until Luvander was convinced he’d said the wrong thing and felt compelled to add “they’re terribly loyal creatures, dragons” and laugh nervously, but then Eileen reached across the table and took his hand in hers and Luvander stopped breathing altogether.

“Thank you,” she said, “for being honest. Niall is always trying to be the best son he can, and in his books that sometimes includes unnecessarily sparing my feelings. He doesn’t realise, see, that he’s already the best son I could’ve hoped for.”

“I know what you mean,” Luvander whispered and swallowed thickly. He looked down at the table cloth and wished he could remove his hand somehow without seeming rude, but Eileen seemed to sense his discomfort and released him again with a final pat.

“You look out for him out there,” she said, and Luvander had the strangest feeling that this wasn’t a request but an observation, and could barely hold it together at the gingery warm look of approval on Eileen’s face. He dropped his gaze again and merely nodded, and that seemed to be enough for Eileen, who then changed the topic to a darling little hat she’d seen in a shop on the Rue just last week and fallen in love with. Luvander joined in enthusiastically, though he couldn’t quite smother a slightly hysterical giggle at the thought that Niall had briefed his mother on Luvander’s interests before this meeting, and when Niall came back with a flourish and a “my two favourite people in the world!”, Luvander couldn’t help clinging to his hand under the table like a drowning man for the rest of the evening.

“You will stay the night with us, I hope?” Eileen said when they finally got up some time after midnight, Luvander somewhat unsteady on his feet after a few too many glasses of wine, though he hadn’t noticed his exact state of intoxication before leaving his chair and Niall’s reassuring hand behind. The restaurant was almost empty, and Niall left them alone again for a few minutes to find them a carriage, during which Luvander shivered in the chilly air and nearly had a conniption when Eileen casually draped her shawl over his shoulders.

“Right, then,” Niall announced as the carriage drew up and he’d helped both his mother and Luvander into it before hopping after them again, “let’s go home, Luvander, no protest, it’s far too late and you’re far too shamefully inebriated to deliver you to your sister, you are coming with us and I’ll hand you over tomorrow after breakfast.”

Luvander was about to protest anyway, but then the carriage lurched into motion and he was rather busy trying not to throw up on Niall’s mother’s shoes, and he forgot all the reasons why staying with them was A Bad Idea.

~

For far too long, Raphael ignored the things he’d pulled out of Ivory’s bedside drawer in favour of kissing him and peeling them both out of their night clothes with slow, apparent relish. Ivory was just starting to worry that Raphael thought he knew what to do and was leaving it up to him to start when Raphael abruptly rolled them over so that he came out sitting astride Ivory’s thighs, looking beautifully dishevelled and smug and eager at the same time. He leaned down to kiss him again and curled his fingers into Ivory’s, pulling them up onto the pillow next to his head, then sat back up and trailed his eyes down Ivory’s loose, naked body under him. The intensity of his gaze made Ivory shiver.

“Can I do that,” Ivory surprised himself by asking when Raphael finally picked the lube off the bedside table and slicked his fingers with it. Raphael’s eyes snapped up to his face for a moment and Ivory felt smug, then Raphael wordlessly hooked his thumb around the curl of Ivory’s index finger and tugged his hand into his lap to repeat the procedure.

“How do I,” Ivory started, and Raphael smiled a guarded little half-moon smile and guided Ivory’s slick fingers down between his legs, adjusting his position until he was basically kneeling on all fours over Ivory.

“Like this,” he murmured, breathy and low, and nudged until Ivory pressed the tip of his finger inside him, feeling terrified and excited all at once.

He waited, but Raphael looked neither like he was in pain nor like he was on the brink of orgasm, just gazed steadily down at him, so Ivory pushed deeper inside and got an encouraging nod in response. He was just wondering what to do next when Raphael smirked a tiny bit and tugged at his hand until he was almost all the way out, then said “again,” easy and comfortable and not at all embarrassed about having Ivory’s finger up his arse, and Ivory cottoned on and found a hesitant rhythm. Raphael closed his eyes, changed his position a little again and curled his free hand around his own cock, matching Ivory’s strokes, and soon he was making small, moany noises and biting his lower lip and gently rocking his hips, once again urging him deeper, until Ivory’s finger seemed to graze that mythical spot he’d heard Luvander talk about more by accident than by design and Raphael gasped and trembled and stopped.

“Okay,” he murmured unsteadily, “okay, when we do this the other way around, there’s definitely going to be more - but I’m ready, now, I don’t need - okay.”

Ivory had to breathe very carefully at the mention of “when we do this the other way around,” but Raphael was pulling back and picking up the lube again along with one of the condoms that he had open and ready in the blink of an eye. He took a moment to give Ivory’s cock a few leisurely strokes with a fresh smear of lube, then peered up at him somewhat hesitantly and asked, “do you mind if we switch? It’s just, huh. I mean, I don’t actually know what you like, so if you prefer it like this, it’s fine…?”

“Switch?” Ivory’s brow peppered itself with a tiny smear of a frown.

Raphael answered the question by flopping ungracefully (and yet somehow still attractively) on to his side next to Ivory and then turning on his back, wriggling and nudging at Ivory’s hip with his own until he had enough space. “Up,” he whispered, tugging Ivory round and hooking his knee beneath Ivory’s to try and encourage him round. “I mean this way,” he clarified when they had between them succeeded in fumbling Ivory into Raphael’s former position. “Like girls usually prefer it, at least the first time… the ones you don’t pay for, anyway.”

Something toothy and bitter snagged at the back of Ivory’s chest at both the reminder that Raphael had slept with whores and country women, and also that Raphael had _slept with whores and country women_. And other men, before, he remembered with a white, sour taste in his mouth. Raphael had all the experience while Ivory only had him, and it struck him as violently unfair that anybody else had been allowed to touch Raphael first. His fingers found Raphael’s shoulders and bit down hard, eliciting another shaky gasp from beneath him. Reminding Raphael not to forget about him, yes, Ivory forced his mind to let go of everything which wasn’t this - he was reminding Raphael not to forget about him over the next month; not to go cavorting with any hay-strewn, ale-bearing wenches or, worse, bow-legged farm boys with freckles who smelled like clean leather.

“Right,” he muttered, and unpeeled his fingers from their pincer grip on Raphael’s shoulder muscles to run them down his chest, over his hips and around under his bum, yanking him upwards and closer down the bed. He let go with one hand to trace his thumb down between Raphael’s cheeks where there was still the sticky, warm traces of lube and the memory of Ivory’s own finger. “Okay,” he nodded, ignoring the thrumming tremble of his own heartbeat frantically knocking at the door marked ‘escape’. “Better spread your legs then.”

~

“Ugh,” Luvander mumbled into the comfortingly familiar skin of Niall’s shoulder, his mouth feeling like cotton wool and cloudy nightmares. “I feel like something took a piss on my soul.”

“Mm,” Niall’s fingers rubbed gentle, soothing spirals into the back of his head. “No offence, but you smell like an old whore who bathed in champagne, too. I shouldn’t have let you drink so much.”

“Yes, it’s your fault,” Luvander grouchily agreed, prodding Niall’s ribs half-heartedly with one finger. “You and your fancy pants chandelier wine and tuxedo waiter establishments. I don’t remember anything except feeling sick in the carriage.”

“Well, that is a crying shame,” Niall mourned cheerfully. “Because I remember everything and let me tell you, Airman Hangover Regrets, it was glorious.”

“Did I say something awful to your mother?” Luvander groaned, turning his face to hide it in Niall’s armpit, which smelled better than the way Luvander felt.

“Did you say - you precious plum,” Niall chuckled. “You were very charming to my mother and even warned her politely when you were about to throw up so she could turn the other cheek. And _after_ you’d been sick and washed your face and brushed your teeth you insisted you felt very much better and climbed me like a tree.”

“Bastion fuck,” Luvander whined, “in front of your mother?”

“Thank the gods, no,” Niall laughed, his nose in Luvander’s hair and his mouth shaping a smoochy kiss against his scalp before he added “mother and I are very good friends but there are some things that I don’t want her to witness. Your luscious juicy butt being my privilege alone, thanks all the same.”

Luvander made a petulant, grumbly sound against his skin, an underlying note of satisfaction nonetheless swirling through it like cream in coffee. Niall tucked him in closer, squishing his nose up against Luv’s head, and whispered “I missed you.”

Luvander felt himself tense, made a series of garbled sounds that might or might not have been an “I miss you too” and then hid his face in the crook of Niall’s neck until the panic had abated and Niall coaxed him out again with the promise of breakfast. While Niall pranced off to make good on that promise, Luvander took a long, soothing hot bath during which he pep-talked himself for the inevitable second meeting of Niall’s mother, who, despite Niall’s reassurances to the contrary, must have definitely witnessed some rather shameful behaviour on Luvander’s part last night. He was just about to climb out of the bathtub with an ungainly flail, determined to apologise to Eileen over coffee and whatever else Niall was cooking up in the kitchen for them, when the bathroom door swung open and Niall stuck his head in.

“I do hope you haven’t tried to drown yourself in there yet, I made you a terrifically nice breakfast tray and it would be a shame to waste it,” he announced, unabashedly trailing his eyes down Luvander’s naked, soapy body. “Mmm. Lovely.”

“I know that there is no such thing as privacy in the Airman, but that doesn’t mean such a thing doesn’t exist outside of it, you know,” Luvander scowled and reached for his towel, but Niall merely smirked and caught the other end of it, tugging it back out of Luvander’s slippery grasp.

“Pri-what now?” he asked innocently, and reeled Luvander in, dripping wet as he was, to run his hands down his back and grab both of his butt cheeks, pulling gently. Luvander felt his stomach twist and trundle and couldn’t help arching up against Niall’s now damp front - it had been far too long since that last night before they’d parted ways, when Niall had fucked him for what seemed like hours in Luvander’s bed until Luvander had felt like screaming and falling asleep at the same time.

“Breakfast can wait,” Niall now whispered huskily in Luvander’s ear, trailing one finger down between his cheeks, and Luvander quite agreed.

~

Raphael was noisy. Ivory hadn’t expected that.

He was also squirmy, and clutchy, and gaspy; a hot wriggling mess in Ivory’s bed, fingers digging into Ivory’s shoulder blades and one leg hooked over the back of his thighs, his foot tucked into the back of Ivory’s knee. It had felt awkward and almost laughably strange to Ivory initially, to be partially inside someone else’s body, braced on his elbows and knees with the flat plane of his nose nudging against Raphael’s. And then Raphael had sighed and hummed against the corner of his mouth, and flexed his hips just the tiniest bit, clenching himself around Ivory’s cock and rocking him fractionally forward. “You don’t have to go slow,” he’d whispered throatily, “I’ve done this before.”

Which was exactly the reminder Ivory needed, apparently, to allow his instincts to take over and start finding a rhythm. Sex like this, it turned out, was sweaty and weird and hot and made embarrassing noises even if they weren’t coming from his own mouth. It was nothing at all like he’d imagined on those staticky, wired, uncasual nights where he had imagined it at all, based on Luvander’s stories and his own vague notions.

It was better, and it was worse, and it was getting faster, apparently, and Raphael was getting louder.

Ivory decided he liked that.

If he rocked his hips to one side, he discovered, Raphael would whimper in the back of his mouth. If he swirled them in a cloudy sort of half circle, Raphael would gasp and arch his back, his fingers straining against Ivory’s skin. And if he thrust quick and shallow and hard then Raphael would make soft, breathless moans and sometimes hum his name. Sometimes he’d match Ivory’s motions with his hips, and at other points he’d cling and press mumbly kisses against Ivory’s throat and the moon of skin below his collarbone. Ivory wanted to write all this down on his piano, this musical movement of their bodies, he wanted to turn the visceral melody of fucking Raphael into a cascade of chords and arpeggios.

Raphael peeled his hands away from Ivory’s shoulders to run them up into his hair and anchor there, and Ivory stopped moving, his skin singing with the loss of Raphael’s short, rough nails nibbling at it. He leaned his weight over to one elbow and reached up to retrieve one of Raphael’s hands, tangling their fingers together on the pillow beside his head. He squeezed, and echoed the pressure with a quick, short snap of his hips. Raphael said “hghnh” and Ivory felt his toes clench against the back of his knee.

“Promise me,” he whispered, holding still and pressing Raphael’s palm against the pillow, fingers so tight it must have been painful. “Promise you won’t forget.”

Raphael made a shivery, half-laughing moan and kissed him, deep and quick, then said: “Babe, I’ve already forgotten about everything except you fucking me” and swirled his hips up against Ivory’s tightly coiled ones, and Ivory had to bite down on Raphael’s shoulder to stop himself from making a very obscene sound of his own.

“Keep your hands and thoughts off anyone who isn’t me and I’ll let you do the same to me when we get back,” Ivory whisper-growled into Raphael’s ear and picked up a fast, almost brutal rhythm again before Raphael was even done processing this, though Ivory could pinpoint the moment he was, because that was when Raphael came with a long, keeny whine, his legs spread as wide as they would go, his hand flexing desperately in Ivory’s grip and the other drifting down his side like tumbleweed in a sudden gale. Ivory, who had never been able to get his head around the idea that it might be anything less than uncomfortable, if not painful, to have someone inside him like this, was caught utterly by surprise, having barely skirted the edge of orgasm himself so far, but the surprise quickly turned into a heady, rushing sort of smugness, because he had made Raphael come without even touching his cock, he had turned him into this trembling, whimpering, sweaty mess on his very first real try, and damn if that wasn’t the most arousing thing he’d ever experienced.

“Don’t stop, I don’t mind,” Raphael whispered breathlessly, the hand on Ivory’s hip now back to clutching, “I want you to come like this, Ivory, please…”

Ivory buried his face in the crook of Raphael’s neck and barely even minded the noises now spilling from his own mouth into the damp fabric of his pillow, because Raphael was still moaning and gasping as Ivory fucked him, still urging him on and hoarsely whispering his name, over and over again, and when he came, Raphael finally wrenched his hand out of Ivory’s death grip and wrapped both of his strong, warm arms snugly around him, holding him close.

~

By the end of the morning, Luvander had learned three things about Niall’s mother. Firstly, that she was the most liberal minded woman in the entire city, never batting so much as a single eyelash when Niall casually informed her that they were late downstairs because they’d had some very private catching up to do, nor when he picked Luvander’s hand up across the breakfast table to noisily lick a smear of marmalade off his thumb. Secondly, she absolutely adored Niall and his brothers - twins, who were absent, both in the army. Luvander knew, of course, that there were parents who thought their children were wonderful, and he knew his own had loved his eldest two sisters, at any rate, openly and unconditionally. A gingery twinge in the small of his back set up a wintry ache at the realisation that perhaps, by the time they’d reached Rose and himself, numbers five and six, they’d run out of affection to show.

Thirdly, Eileen had both a sense of humour as filthy, and a cheerful attitude to the world as indomitable as her son’s. She made it easy to understand Niall’s permanent good mood and habit of turning anything into a joke, whether sweet or sour. Luvander discovered that Niall's father had been an army captain who was already married and refused to acknowledge anything about the affair, but that Eileen had won over a young general two years later and married him instead; bringing up her three boys alone on a diet rich in laughter, respect and fighting spirits after her husband was killed in a Ke’Han attack. “Don’t let her start talking about it,” Niall twinkled at him when this story came out, “you’ll be here all day hearing about what a handsome scoundrel my father was and what a lucky catch my stepfather.”

All the same, when the front door emitted a sharp knock just seconds later, Niall danced off to answer it, leaving Luvander alone with Eileen to hear her tales of dashing rakish captains and winsome generals after all. He wanted to take the opportunity to apologise for the dregs of the night before, and for their appalling late appearance that morning - it was barely morning at all, any longer - but Eileen was pouring him more tea and launching into an anecdote about Niall’s unsurprisingly outrageous youth before he could even open his mouth. “Has he told you about the time he jumped out the first floor window to escape from some of my less exciting guests?” she started. “Didn’t break anything except a rose bush - I swear that boy is made of rubber…”

“Luvander,” Niall sang from from the hallway, interrupting this rather promising beginning. Luvander was disappointed, confused and relieved all at once, an unsettling cocktail in the bowl of his stomach which made him wonder if he’d had too much jam. “Someone looking for you,” Niall reappeared in the doorway, looking cheekily delighted. Luvander was suffused with a sharp, intense desire to drag him back upstairs and spend the rest of the day kissing every corner of his body, which burst into his chest like carnal neuralgia.

He blinked to clear it, and registered what Niall had just said. How could someone be looking for him _here_?

And then Rosie’s husband came marching in with a mixture of defiance and confused curiosity in the set of his back and shoulders, glancing around with his bone-dry blue eyes and relaxing fractionally when they landed on Luvander at the breakfast table with his tea poised halfway to his mouth.

“Well,” he said into the strange, eggshell silence that ensued, “well. There you are.”

“Here I am,” Luvander said stupidly, and made such an outrageous fuss about putting his teacup down exactly in the middle of the saucer that he could feel his own cheeks heating in squirmy embarrassment over himself.

“Mum, this is Luvander’s brother-in-law, who has come to take him safely back to his sister’s house,” Niall supplied at last, looking highly amused. “Mr Rosie, this is my esteemed and terrifically beautiful mother, who is entirely to blame for keeping us up far past Luvander’s bedtime last night and the reason why we failed to return him in a timely manner.”

To Luvander’s utter astonishment, Eileen didn’t frown or get angry, but nodded very solemnly and got up to shake the befuddled newcomer’s hand.

“Yes, yes, all my fault, I apologise,” Eileen was saying in a gravely voice, “I do so hope you will allow us to have him again, though, he is such charming company and Niall has been nothing but moping around the house in his underpants during his absence.”

It took another twenty minutes of overly polite reassurances, apologies, thank yous and half disturbed, half long suffering facial expressions from Rosie’s husband before he and Luvander departed from the house with a box full of home made cinnamon rolls and Luvander’s clothes from the night before bundled in a neat little cloth bag as he had borrowed some of Niall’s after his bath. Niall waved from the entrance, Luvander’s red scarf flapping in the breeze around his neck, which he had claimed in exchange for the clothes, and Luvander waved back until the carriage turned a corner and Niall was out of sight.

There was a brief silence as Luvander sank into his seat, then Rosie’s husband muttered an amused “Mr Rosie…?” and Luvander was unexpectedly gripped by giggly hysterics for the rest of the ride.

~

The strangest part about being back at home, Ivory discovered, was that the moment he stepped over the threshold of his brothers’ house it was as if he had never been away at all. His cat glared at him balefully from the window sill, her expression two parts resignation at his return to one part betrayal at his original departure. The sun danced across the floor in minimal golden stripes behind her, a tan and polished wooden tabby which echoed her black and brindle coat.

Sebastian’s herbs still marched across the back of the kitchen table when Ivory trailed in there on the scout for some green tea, and there were still crumbs around the bread basket because Maxwell was useless at sweeping those up. The rag rug in front of the stove still curled over in one corner like an autumn leaf. His piano, most importantly, still stood in the corner below the stairs, dusted and closed with his music sheets stacked neatly on top of the cabinet - although when Ivory opened it up and breathed out with the fan of his own fingers against the cool, familiar keys to play a chord, he realised the instrument was sadly out of tune.

He’d have to get that fixed. Something wiry and hot clenched up in his gut as he remembered the feeling of Raphael twisting and moaning underneath him last night, and an entire concerto rang through his mind. He had a month, Ivory reasoned. Time enough to compose in peace.

And then Maxwell appeared in the doorway behind him, clasped a hand to his beard and another to his heart as he exclaimed “the prodigal returns!” and Ivory remembered why there was nothing peaceful about being back at home at all, and wished he’d stayed at the Airman with Cassiopeia’s copper laughter for company.

“Did they kick you out?” Maxwell asked immediately, and Ivory rolled his eyes. “Did you stab someone at last?”

“Only with my penis,” Ivory said without meaning to at all.

An emerald silence rocked between his words and his brother, a firework lit which was late going off. Ivory’s stomach turned cold like he’d swallowed ice. The slow stretch of Maxwell’s mouth into a grin which, Ivory knew from experience, would sit there for weeks, was like watching a carriage wreck in half time. He wanted to cut out his own tongue.

“Well, well, well,” Maxwell eventually said in a voice like wishes granted and dreams come true. “And they kicked you out for that? Gays still not allowed in the military, hey? What a time to be alive.”

“We’re on furlough,” Ivory announced, deciding that treating Maxwell like he was Amery or Niall was the best option for getting through this month without murdering him. “Raids have stopped so we’ve been given a month to indulge in some,” he screwed his mouth to the side, “home comforts.”

“We can sue, you know,” Max pursed his lips. “Unfair dismissal, you’re supposed to be allowed to plough whatever you want so long as you make good your commitment to do the Esar’s bidding as well. ‘Course, it would mean you’d have to get up in court and tell a judge about losing your virginity, so you might not be up for that, but--”

“Who lost their virginity?” Sebastian asked cheerfully, swinging a trug of spring cabbages as he gave Maxwell a shove out of the doorway. There was a smudge of mud on the tip of his nose and he was wearing his favourite checked flannel shirt, which Ivory had used to wrap around his shoulders as a child during thunderstorms, because Sebastian meant safety. “My, my,” he breathed when he spotted Ivory now, however, and all fondness for that shirt and the man wearing it uncharitably left Ivory’s mind. “To what do we owe the honour of playing host to a member of his majesty’s esteemed Dragon Corps? And me in my boots and breeches, and you’ve not brushed your beard Maxwell. Oh dear, what an embarrassment.”

“They kicked him out for having butt sex,” Maxwell told Sebastian. “I think he should sue.”

“They did not kick me out,” Ivory snapped, fretfully rubbing two fingers over the smooth, shiny surface of his piano’s keys. Technically, the piano belonged to all of them, since it had been their mother’s and the three brothers had jointly inherited all of her belongings, but Ivory still thought of it as his piano, since neither Maxwell nor Sebastian were inclined to play. This might have had something to do with the fact that Ivory usually threatened to peel the skin off their hands with a rusty knife if they touched it, though his brothers would never have believed this, as there were, in fact, no rusty knives to be found in their entire household, and Ivory was far too lazy to make good on such a big endeavour.

“I see you’re not denying the butt sex part though,” Sebastian said slyly, setting down his cabbages and stepping up to examine Ivory. “You look different. Doesn’t he look different, Maxxie? All grown-up and experienced…”

Ivory rolled his eyes, shut the piano cover and went to retrieve what little things he had brought with him in terms of luggage.

“Such a shame we’ve rented out your old room,” Maxwell declared woefully just as Ivory shouldered past him to get to the stairs, and Ivory used the temporary proximity to reach up and quickly scrub his hand through Maxwell’s carefully coiffed beard. He danced up the steps to the sounds of indignant Maxwellian squawks and Sebastian’s laughter and reached his room, which was definitely not rented out to anyone, and in fact looked entirely undisturbed except for the lack of dust indicating that his brothers regularly cleaned it. Ivory closed the door behind him, took a deep breath, let his luggage drop on a chair and sprawled out on his bed, his ears still ringing with the ugly noise of the city and his head spinning from the carriage ride, lungs expanding painfully in his chest.

He was home, and safe, and he’d had sex and not even his brothers’ teasing made the knowledge of that any less overwhelming and sweet.

“Good,” he said to himself in the floaty drift of silence that tugged at him like a small stream, and then got up to wash the grime of travelling off and join his brothers for tea.

~

After the weepy, shrieking, chattering reunion pile-ups in the gravel outside the house, after three cups of welcome home tea and two heaping plates of steaming, delicious dinner, after endless telling and re-telling of dragon-related bedtime stories and the obligatory exchange of city and country gossip, after a soothing fireplace silence with his dad and an impromptu late night herb garden chat with his mum and some star-gazing, Raphael was alone.

For the first time in what felt like months, he was well and truly alone in his own room, no raucous airman laughter drifting over from the common room or stomping boots outside in the corridor, no raid siren related insomnia or sooty elation toasts with Ke’Han wine, nor the distant clatter of hooves on cobblestones and not the sound of gentle, hesitant knocking on his door that Raphael found himself quietly hoping for every single night now. He lay in his own squishy old bed, wide awake and staring at the clumsily painted ceiling, hands behind his head and ears straining for the knocking that his brain was well aware wouldn’t come tonight. For months, he had ached for the familiar comfort of his home and family, and now that he was swathed in it once again, with every need taken care of and almost everyone he cared about peacefully asleep in the same house, he suddenly yearned for the discomforts of the Airman building, and the one person who came with them that Raphael had been unable to get out of his head even way before Ivory had insisted on engraving himself in stone there with a command and a promise.

He ached a bit from the night before and the jolting carriage ride, cobbles clattering themselves out only into stony, awkward country lanes and doing nothing for his comfort or the carriage’s suspension. In spite of his reassurances to Ivory about having done that before, it had hardly been a quick shag and it had been quite a while since the last time. Raphael flexed his toes against the rough towelling cotton of his old familiar sheets and felt the burn of longing settle sweet and fluid in the bones of his hips and under his ribs.

With a sigh, he sat up again and flicked a candle into life, wishing he had some sort of music to drown out the lack of Ivory - before realising that music was synonymous with Ivory anyway and would really only make the situation worse. He scrabbled in the top drawer of his bedside cupboard where he kept his most precious commodities - old letters, a hair ribbon from his first love, some favourite poetry painstakingly copied from library books, a dusty sketch of his mother drawn by his younger brother which he hadn’t been satisfied with and had tried to throw on the fire. His sister’s wonky early attempt at knitting him a scarf. Parchment and ink.

Raphael wrote to Ivory until his candle stuttered and swallowed itself in a fingerprint pool of its own wax. He tucked the letter under his own pillow in the grey promise of dawn, knowing he would never send it.

It was the first of thirty-seven.


	20. Lesson Twenty: Things Said And Unsaid

Luvander went back to the Airman a little early, because Rosie and her husband were going away for a few days, and even though they’d offered multiple times to take him along, Luvander had refused on the grounds that they had endured his presence for long enough already and, besides, probably needed some newlywed time. The other reason was that he was quite happy to settle in at the Airman before the rest of his rowdy comrades came pouring back in, so he could get re-acclimatised with his life as a member of the Royal Dragon Corps in peace, and also because he needed to do some thinking in his very own space after all the excitement of being folded so seamlessly into both Rosie’s new and Niall’s old family, without any of these people constantly bustling around him with cups of tea or an unimpressed face whenever Luvander failed to switch off his automatic panic response to people being nice to him. He was grateful to them for being so kind, but sometimes it made him feel even more inadequate that he couldn’t just throw off his inhibitions and join in the way they wanted him to, and so he guiltily neglected to tell Niall that he was going back to the Airman a couple of days early, because he was sure Niall would persuade him to stay with him and his mum, and then spent a whole blissful day lounging on various surfaces, catching up with Yesfir and eating all the things that no one had called dibs on yet.

On the second day, Luvander was just cheerfully desecrating Ivory’s piano by rubbing his bum all over the keys wearing only his underwear and drinking Ghislain’s best coffee when he heard the door open and had barely a minute to frantically dive towards the sofa, down half a mug’s worth of scalding hot coffee and arrange his features into a perfectly innocent expression like he had no idea where his clothes had gone before the newcomer walked past the common room and stopped with a surprised expression skittering across his pale face like a startled spider.

“Ivory, darling,” Luvander’s mouth blurted without his brain having had the chance to double-check if this was an appropriate situation to use those words, “you’re back early!”

“...So are you?” Ivory said in his customary deadpan voice, and Luvander heard himself emit a somewhat hysterical laugh.

“Funny,” he gasped, “so funny, how that… happens… sometimes… so come, help yourself to coffee and tell me all about your exciting stay in the deep wilds of rural Volstov, you must be brimming with scandalous gossip and scintillating stories…”

Ivory’s eyes briefly danced over to his piano, narrowing in suspicion, but, upon finding it seemingly intact, he seemed to let it go and held up his luggage before disappearing wordlessly into his room. Luvander sunk back into the couch cushions with a sigh of pure relief, then scurried off to his own room to get properly dressed, and busied himself in the kitchen, jumping half out of his skin when Ivory reappeared only minutes later with a towel around his damp neck and an empty kettle that he filled at the sink.

“Oh,” Luvander said, “what’s this, will you be joining me after all? I know, it can be a bit of a shock, coming back to the quiet city life after the noise and the crowds of the country…”

“Keep talking,” Ivory said idly, turning off the tap, “sooner or later you’ll tell me what you did to my poor piano and we can get on with me skinning you for it.”

Luvander made a noise like a particularly fat caterpillar had just dropped down the back of his shirt, and Ivory managed to maintain his serious murder face for half a minute longer before biting his lip against a grin and going to fetch a second mug for Luvander.

“Scoundrel!” Luvander gasped, then tip-toed closer to inspect the tea tin closer over Ivory’s shoulder. “Isn’t that your favourite? Are you going to share that? With meeee?”

“Not if you fail to remove your chin from my body in the next three seconds.”

Luvander made it to two and a half before chickening out, and after some idle small-talk on Luvander’s part and some entirely unnecessary faffing about with the tea on Ivory’s, they retreated amiably to the common room and jointly enjoyed the uncharacteristic silence in there for as long as Luvander could resist pestering Ivory about his holiday. All he managed to tickle out of him was that his brothers had been awful (but also great and unfairly attractive, at least if Luvander read between the lines), that there had been a lot of cats, for some reason, and, from an offhand comment, that Ivory had somehow composed a whole score of music because he’d been “so bored” and there had been nothing else to do ever since he was banned from playing around with fire in or anywhere near the house.

“Intriguing,” Luvander replied to that, “not sure I want to know what prompted this particular household rule. Can I hear some of that music, though?”

“No,” Ivory said immediately, looking murderous again at the mere notion. “It’s not for you.”

“Oho,” Luvander smirked over the rim of his mug. “So it’s for someone though, is it? Now I wonder who that might be? What wild soul could possibly be the intended recipient of an original Airman Ivory score? Must be someone very _romantic_ if they’re going to appreciate the sentiment. Possibly even… _poetic_?”

Ivory’s frozen blue eyes met Luvander’s across the sofa and gave away absolutely zero emotion.

“I wrote it for my cat,” he said, blank and unimpressed.

Luvander rolled his eyes. “Cats hate romance, Ivory. They are aloof masters of indifference, you wasted your talents. You should have at least composed it for Cassiopeia if you’re going to cheat poor Raphael out of such a gift.”

“Not that I give a rotten shit, but how’s Niall?” Ivory asked, picking casually at a loose thread on the arm of the sofa.

“You’re changing the subject.”

“Yes. Is he well? You’re far too chipper to have not seen him all month.”

“I have seen him,” Luvander agreed smugly. After their unplanned sleepover and his subsequent embarrassing retrieval plus telling off from his sister about at least warning her if he was going to stay out all night like a dirty tramp, Luvander had seen Niall a further seven times before coming back to the Airman. Three days after the dinner date he’d received a letter which simply said _Come for lunch. And then come again. I miss having your cock in my mouth._ Luvander had squeaked and flushed a fetching cerise at the breakfast table, dropping the note in a pot of cherry jam so it matched, and then stuffing it sticky and scrumpled into his pocket before Rosie or her husband could pick it up. “That will be from your boyfriend, then,” Rosie’s husband had said without inflection, and buttered another slice of toast. “I’m not fetching you again, you can walk home or pay for your own carriage this time.”

Then there had been a picnic in the park with Niall and his mother, a trip to the theatre - Luvander’s first, which Niall was both delighted and scandalised to discover, lunch with Holly and Aria, dinner at Rosie’s house at her insistence which had made Luvander squirmy and awkward and nibblingly worried right up until Niall had arrived and scattered charm and cheerfulness all over the whole evening like fairy dust. There had been an afternoon shopping together on the Rue which had even involved some public kissing which still made Luvander’s ears burn and his stomach flicker to think about. And then there had been the night last week when Eileen had sent a note round for Rosie saying _for Bastion’s sake send your brother over, my son is in an atrocious mood and I don’t know what to do with him_.

So: “I have seen him,” Luvander agreed smugly. “I met his mother.”

“Brave,” Ivory acknowledged.

“Well, he tried to kill himself and my sister’s ivy first, so I suppose it was a fair exchange.”

Ivory arched an eyebrow at this and declined to comment. He flexed his long toes out in front of him on the coffee table and leaned his head back against the cushions, his throat exposed like a pale horizon; eyes closed. The Airman felt alien and comforting all at once, familiar in its comfortable disarray and the debris that thirteen men and a cat living together naturally accrued; unknown and disconcerting in its uncharacteristic silence and emptiness.

“Did you miss him, then,” Luvander asked quietly, “Raphael?”

“Mm,” Ivory swallowed and Luvander watched the arch of his throat shiver and bob with the movement. “I did, actually.”

“He coming back with the others?”

Ivory made another vaguely consenting noise, then swiftly got up, slid himself into the stool in front of the piano, and put his fingers to the keys like a ballerina getting into position backstage. He started playing, and it was quiet and light at first, spring rain on window glass and smudged pink dawns and something Luvander could only call ennui, like the feeling of waking up in the country far away from everything you knew you belonged to. It was also different than the music Ivory usually played, less refined but somehow more precious, more intimate, and Luvander was sure this was something that Ivory had composed himself, and felt strangely touched that he was allowed to hear it after all.

“This is how I missed him,” Ivory murmured when the last notes faded away, fingers still poised on the keys. He looked away, shoulders hunched and body tense again in a way it wasn’t when he played, and Luvander had to swallow down hard on all the inappropriate things he wanted to say about how Ivory should play him the part where he missed Raphael in the pants.

“Are you going to play it for him?” he asked instead, and Ivory snorted and closed the lid of the piano with a decisive snick.

“Are you going to tell Niall that you came back early instead of spending the last few days of your time off under the sheets with him?”

“Noo,” Luvander whimpered, scowling and scrunching himself up into a blanket ball on his armchair. “It’s not… this isn’t about him.”

“I know,” Ivory said softly and smoothed his palm over the piano lid. “This isn’t about Raphael, either. I mean, it is, but not… in the sharing way.”

He looked unhappy with his choice of words, but Luvander knew what he meant, even though he didn’t quite agree. Ivory’s music was intensely personal, and Luvander hoped that one day Raphael might be lucky enough to hear it and know that it was about him.

“So,” Luvander cleared his throat, “how’s it going on the hands in pants front, then? Anything I missed in the frenzy of everyone packing their delicates for home?”

“How I’ve missed these little chats of ours,” Ivory replied on the sarcastic ribbon of a small sigh.

“That’s either _terrible_ or _excellent_ then,” Luvander raised an eyebrow. “Nice evasive manoeuvres, by the way.”

“Skill of the trade,” Ivory said. “Didn’t they teach you Swifts that?”

“We don’t need to evade,” Luvander snorted evasively, “we see the danger coming in time to get out the way.”

“Interesting,” Ivory pursed his lips, “so how come you haven’t run away yet? Because I am definitely about to ask you how it’s going on the telling your boyfriend how you really feel about him front, and yet… you’re still sitting right there.”

Luvander made a fart noise which was definitely a habit he had picked up from Niall. “Saw that coming,” he lied, “ _miles_ off. It’s another evasive tactic, Airman Ivory, and it’s not going to work on me. How many hands have you had in your man’s pants yet?”

Ivory stretched out one of the hands in question in front of his face, spacing his fingers and watching the way the sunlight seeped between them like splinters of fine gold. He breathed in slowly, like Cassiopeia drawing air for a blast of flame, and said “I think I might go for a flight. You can come, if you want - but if you ask any more questions about Raphael’s pants I will have Cassie firebomb you all the way over the Cobalts.”

~

Ivory was drunk.

He didn’t know how this had happened, except for the fact that Luvander was somehow to blame for it, and a bottle of Ke’Han wine that Ghislain had had stashed inside one of the less frequently used armchairs and which Luvander, sneaky Swift bastard that he was, had sniffed out some time after they’d come back from an impromptu dinner in town with Holly and Aria. Luvander had insisted on sneaking the girls in through a back entrance and showing them round the Airman while they still had the rare chance of doing so without the shitstorm that the other airmen would unleash upon them if they were present, and now the four of them were sprawled out in the common room, Ivory with his head in Aria’s velvet-clad lap and Luvander twirling Holly around on the rug in front of the fireplace.

“Are you quite sure you don’t want to meet my dragon, ma’am?” Luvander purred as he dipped her backward, her dark hair swishing and bouncing with the movement and fiery highlights dancing in her brown eyes.

“Is that a euphemism, Airman Luvander?” Holly smirked back. “I’ll have you know I’m a fucking lady, mister. I ain’t looking at any… dragons.”

Ivory was watching Aria, who was watching Holly with the sort of casual fondness that Ivory wished he could procure for Raphael when he was accidentally flirting with someone that wasn’t him, but which was usually eclipsed by a raging, ugly possessiveness that he’d only ever felt towards his piano and his dragon before.

“How can you stand it,” he whispered, and Aria turned her eyes on him, a strand of her loose red hair swinging over her shoulder and glinting in the light. Ivory blinked slowly like a cat and caught it, flicked it back into place and felt the lazy swirl of alcohol in his system like dust motes dancing through the air. “How can you let others have her without feeling like a rusty knife inside?”

Aria smiled.

“She’s not a piece of cake,” she said cryptically, raising an eyebrow, “sharing her doesn’t diminish how much there is for me.”

Ivory closed his eyes. The alcohol was buzzing in his ears, the way he sometimes felt after a raid when Ace had made one too many things explode. He had to swallow a few times, dug his bare toes into the sofa cushions and his fingers into the fabric of his shirt, and opened his mouth again, unsure what to say.

“Everyone’s wired differently, love,” Aria murmured soothingly and painted one cool swipe down the bridge of Ivory’s nose with her index finger. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. The important thing is that all the parties involved are - compatible in what they want.”

She gazed over at Holly, who was laughing and swaying along to whatever music was in her head as Luvander whispered something in her ear, his arms wrapped around her shoulders. Ivory let his face twist into some shapes, then swallowed again and flexed a hand in front of his face.

“How do I find out,” he asked, an unwieldy bulk of words in his mouth coming loose at last, clumsy as they were. “How do I know he won’t ever fuck someone else if I let him fuck me?”

He crooked one finger the way he had done when that finger had been inside Raphael on the night before they’d left, and briefly lost himself in the memory of Raphael humming and rocking his hips over him, a tingling, tugging sensation in his stomach like a hole being sewn up. He didn’t notice that it had grown quiet around him.

“You don’t,” Aria said at last, her fingertips smoothing away invisible tension at his forehead. “But that’s not a good enough reason to let someone fuck you, anyway.”

“What is a good enough reason to let someone fuck me,” Ivory slurred, feeling exhausted and strange, and from somewhere to his left came a low chuckle.

“Because it feels good,” Luvander crooned, and somehow he had relocated to the floor next to Ivory’s sofa, sitting cross-legged with Holly’s head on his shoulder.

“And if it doesn’t?” Ivory asked.

“Then you stop,” Holly told him, “and if your partner disagrees or gives you grief about that, you punch him in the face.”

“Or the dick,” Luvander giggled, the bubble of noise dwindling into a sad little hiccup. “Ivory,” he sighed, “Ive, Ivy, Ivory my darling, just - you should do your - just fuck him on the piano so he knows it’s special, yeah?”

“Nooo,” Ivory whined, turning his face into Aria’s warm thigh. The velvet was soft and sweet under his cheek, like Raphael’s shoulder in one of his woollen jumpers. “Not my precious, nooo. Don’t say bad things.”

Aria tangled her fingers in Ivory’s hair and rubbed them against his scalp, just above his ear. He blinked one eye up at her dozily and whispered “not on the piano”, just as someone cleared their throat in the doorway - the sound of keys and doors opening or closing having been swallowed up in the cloud of wine-soaked conversation which hung, pendulous, over their heads.

“Heyyy,” Luvander sang, tipping his head back on the sofa to see who their new arrival was. “We’re wining - we’re having wine - it’s - haha, want some?”

“Don’t do it,” Ivory moaned against Aria’s leg, “don’t listen to him, he’s full of - he is a wicked, filthy temptress, this wine is - is bad - it’s very bad wine. Mnnph. And not on my piano.”

“I see,” Raphael said, and his voice was the sad kiss of rain against a grey, morning window. “Thanks anyway, but I’ll be - I mean, no thanks.”

“Wait, where are you going?” Ivory flailed himself out of Aria’s lap, the common room spinning like a carousel, the blurred bright colours of the girl’s dresses, Aria’s hair, Luvander’s waistcoat and general Airman detritus whirling past in giddy watercolour for a moment. “Come back,” he whined, clutching at his forehead to stall the swirl.

“I’ll be in my room,” Raphael said. The cold shiver a bucket of water snuffing out a flame trickled down Ivory’s spine.

He sighed, slumped back against Aria again and said, softly: “such nice hair. He’s got. He’s got such nice hair, my Raphael.”

~

Ivory woke up to the sound of a thousand demon pixies hammering holes in his brain. His mouth tasted like ash and his body felt strung out, withered and stretched all at once; a wire pulled too tight and shaking with the effort of not snapping. Nausea swirled in lumpy, unshapely patterns in his gut, and the darting silver threads across the insides of his eyelids let him know he was in for one of the very worst strain of his headaches.

He should have expected that. Ke’Han wine. His brothers would be so proud and so disapprovingly appalled. Ivory could practically see them shaking their heads with mute, mutual expressions of _I told you so_.

Maybe he could stab Luvander. Then again, that would mean moving, and Ivory was dizzy and sick and distressed.

Maybe tomorrow.

The second time he woke up was on the wings of a nightmare about Cassiopeia being stripped down for her metal and magic parts, taken to pieces with metallic screams and the smell of charred iron everywhere. Ivory was breathless, thirsty, and still seeing kaleidoscopic filaments of glittering lines across his vision. Nonetheless, he forced himself to his feet and groped his way along the corridor to the kitchen for some water. At least, he realised with a cold and pale clarity, he had got to bed at some point and not fallen asleep in the common room.

The kitchen was mercifully empty, and Ivory scrunched up his face against the bright spring sunlight that streamed through the wide window over the sink. He rolled the cool barrel of a glass across his forehead, filled it with water and then splashed some on to his face as well, feeling less groggy for the cold bite of the liquid. He’d almost downed the glass of water when Raphael came in, hunched up in his dressing gown with his hair in disarray.

Ivory swallowed, and felt a pathetic drip of water crawl down his chin from the corner where his mouth met the edge of his glass.

Raphael folded his arms over his chest, elbows gripped in his palms, and looked at the floor - defensive and aggressive all at once. “So,” he said, bitter and soft like over-ripe gooseberries, “I’m not supposed to so much as think about anyone apart from you, but you’re free to fuck around with whatever whore you fancy. Is that it?”

Ivory winced, more at the noise than the words, which didn’t quite sink into the murky quicksand of his brain until a few seconds later. When they did, Ivory groaned and pressed the cool glass to his forehead again, one hand braced against the sink.

“They’re not - Aria and Holly - whores, I mean they are, but not last night,” he tried to say, though he wasn’t sure how much of this actually translated, as his voice felt like powder in his mouth that blew away the moment he opened it. Raphael was looking at him now, with eyes that were red-rimmed and small, but he didn’t say anything, and a sour, curdling panic burst in Ivory’s stomach, making him lurch forward over the sink and retch, though his throat remained dry and scratchy like tree bark.

“Suppose that Ke’Han wine was more fun last night,” Raphael said, sounding flat and defeated. Then he made a horrible sound that was vaguely reminiscent of a laugh, but a very ugly one, a burnt-out husk of a laugh. “So what are they, then, if not whores? Mistresses? Girlfriends?”

“You’re an idiot,” Ivory said weakly, still curled over the sink, and Raphael made the sound again.

“Yes, yes I really am, aren’t I? I always am, after all. Thinking I could ever have this - have you…”

“Friends,” Ivory ground out, fingers pressed hard against the cold rim of the sink, “Holly and Aria are our friends, because they had the bastion-damned decency not to toss Luvander and me out in the street and tell everyone what we were when you lot dragged us to a brothel full of women we didn’t want to sleep with.”

There was a long pause, during which Ivory squeezed his eyes shut and had to force himself to take long, deep, calming breaths against the nausea and dizziness. He wanted nothing more than to go back to bed, but he didn’t think he could actually let go of the sink without collapsing, and wouldn’t that be humiliating?

“Oh,” Raphael said at last, a tiny word buoyed up by a short burst of breath. “So - so you didn’t, um. On the. Piano?”

“Fuck no,” Ivory half-sobbed half-laughed and pressed the heel of one hand down over his eyes. “Not anywhere. Never, in fact. With anyone. There, now you know.”

“You did with me though,” Raphael reminded him, words that were soft like cat’s paws, tiptoeing across a flimsy ledge.

“Yes,” Ivory sighed, exhausted and shaking, his head feeling like thunder cracking open the skies. “Yes, I did. With you. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got a headache. I’m going back to bed.”

~

“I love you.”

There it was. Three unassuming words, ruffled into Luvander’s hair in passing, pressed to his cheekbone along with a kiss, tangled in his fingers and squeezed out of shape. Niall took two more steps toward the door, then froze, tension in his shoulders like creeping frost, and Luvander suddenly had to resist the urge to sing loudly, or curse, or scream, just to drown out that horrible silence that came after. At last, Niall glanced over his shoulder, looking worried, and Luvander forced himself to flash him a smile and quickly resumed sorting through his cravat collection with nervous fingers.

“See you at dinner?” Niall said, voice thick like a first snow, and Luvander hummed his agreement and nodded, pulling out cravats at random and stuffing them back into the drawer. He was going to have to re-sort them later. Later, when he allowed himself to think about the fact that Niall had said “I love you” and Luvander hadn’t said it back, which was horrifying in itself, and now Niall apparently thought that Luvander was going to - what? Kick him out? Laugh at him? Hate him?

“Right,” Niall said, and again, “right,” before hurriedly leaving Luvander’s room. Luvander could hear him practically run down the corridor and slam the door to his own room shut behind him, and he sighed.

The problem wasn’t that he didn’t love Niall. The problem was that he _did_.

They’d spent Niall’s first night back together in Luvander’s bed, kissing and holding each other, exchanging gossip and squabbling over a stupid bet they’d had concerning Jeannot’s propensity to wear outlandish clothes whenever you least expected to find one of your fellow airmen dressed in a tea towel and Ghislain’s fuzzy slippers in the kitchen at three o’clock in the morning. Nothing outrageous had happened, and Luvander had been distracted by the giddy squeezy feeling in his chest and stomach all night at being reunited with his lover even though they’d only been apart for a few days, and then Niall had shifted them around and pressed Luvander’s wrists into the pillows and murmured “remember that time we had sex in the kitchen” into Luvander’s ear, and Luv had moaned and rubbed himself against Niall and asked, somewhat cheekily, if Niall fancied a repeat.

“I do, actually,” Niall had said, looking serious in the rosy glow of candle light emanating from Luvander’s window sill.

It was the second time that Luvander fucked Niall, but it was so different it might as well have been the first. That night in the kitchen had been quick and angry and proving a point; this time, the only thing Luvander had to prove was that he could make Niall beg, by tying him to the headboard with the help of two silky cravats and taking his sweet time with every step of the process: peeling him out of his pyjama pants, kissing and nuzzling and licking his way down his body, sucking his cock to full, leaking hardness and sliding one slick finger inside him, and then a second, and then stopping again and going back to kissing and licking until Niall hooked his foot under Luvander’s arm to pull him back up and demanded to be fucked in a less than dignified way. Luvander had never been able to say no to wicked demands, of course, but he’d done it slow, paused often to wrap his hand around Niall’s penis and play around with that for as long as he fancied, and he was achingly tired and on the itchy, ragged brink of orgasm himself when he finally let Niall come.

They’d both slept exceedingly well after that.

“Fuck,” Luvander muttered to himself and lay back against his pillow with a sigh. “Fuck fucking everything.”

He should have seen it coming, really, but the fact was that he _hadn’t_ , and now it had happened and Luvander was back where he’d started, a scared little farm boy with horse-shit on his favourite shoes and straw in all his scarves, heart beating in his throat at the thought of escaping that oppressive town and stepping out into the real world.

He’d had grand fantasies about being swept off his feet by a handsome city-dweller as soon as he stepped foot in Thremedon. What he hadn’t anticipated, and what was perhaps the most painful to realise, was that for all the fancy clothes and company, he was still the same boy who’d sneaked out of his parents’ house in the wee hours of the morning to walk the endless miles into the next town and catch a carriage to the city, and he’d be busy picking the straw out of his abused heart for a long time to come before it stopped squirming in terror every time any sweeping off feet actually happened.

He stayed in bed for the rest of the day.

Niall cast him tentative, worried looks at dinner, but he was engulfed by Amery, Raphael and Evariste, who was telling them about being seduced by his parents’ new maid in the scullery on his leave, and Luvander left him to it, wolfing down his dinner and then high-tailing it back to his room. And then, suddenly, it was three in the morning, a shivering ache of a spring night which trembled with endless rain, and Raphael was at Luvander’s bedroom door, soot-soaked and shaking; his hair a forest fire of sweat, wind and dark comedy.

No one had expected the raid siren to sound the second night back after their leave. There wasn’t even a rota so all thirteen of them had wound up in their dragon’s bays before Adamo had taken stock of who looked most awake and ordered the rest back to bed.

“Niall’s, um,” Raphael said, and Luvander felt something like teeth gnawing down his own spine because Niall had always been able to spring out of bed singing, whatever time of day. “They took him, he’s um,” Raphael swallowed, “they took him to the Rittenhouse - it’s not far - Chief told me to fetch you.”


	21. Lesson Twenty-One: Hypothetical Speaking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo you know how this story has been rated Explicit for a while now? Yeah. This chapter is REALLY explicit. We thought we'd end on a high. Also, er, squick warning for rimming I guess? Anyways, happy holidays everyone, and thanks for reading this epic pile of nonsense! J&A

Ivory hadn’t spoken to Raphael since the incident in the kitchen. Instead, he’d spent as much of his spare time getting reacquainted with Cassiopeia as possible - taking her out for soaring, breezy flights with Adamo’s permission, forgetting about everything but the wind in his face and the stomach-jolting glee of watching the city fan itself out in miniature; Cassie breathing smoke shapes through the clouds just for the fun of it; spring sunshine glancing icy and glittering off the tips of her wings. He spent hours aggressively polishing her after, the sharp, metallic sounds of the dragon pens and the repetitive motions of his body soothing and quieting the maelstrom thoughts in his mind.

Afterwards, he’d lie on his bed and ache, drifting into an exhausted, if unsatisfactory sleep.

That had been the last four days, and then there was the commotion and ruckus of everyone arriving back - Jeannot’s newest hideous clothes needed to be stolen and mocked, Merritt had gained seventeen thousand new freckles - or so Evariste estimated - which meant he needed to be pinned down so the other boys could count them. Ivory had forgotten how much space the other men took up just by existing, and how much noise they made even when they weren’t talking (which was rare). The sudden cacophony after weeks of humble, country quiet and the unnatural stillness of having the Airman (almost) all to himself felt like a landslide inside his brain, something carefully built crumbling under the weight of his comrades.

He stayed in his room and sharpened his knives.

In fact, he’d still been awake sharpening them when the alarm bell rang, and habit catapulted him into his flight gear and down to Cassiopeia’s pen. He was already saddled up and ready to go when Adamo started barking commands, and it was only then that Ivory realised they’d all shown up for duty.

“Ivory, you’re up,” Adamo nodded at him, and Ivory jammed his helmet down and got mounted. Cassie was already purring and flexing her wing joints.

The wind and the cool spring air were a slap in his face, ice against sensitive teeth, and Ivory found it momentarily exhilarating, the familiar swoop of his gut as they shot up through the clouds and closed ranks with Proudmouth, Erdeni and Natalia. He was grateful, as Adamo signalled positions and orders, that whatever personal quarrels they were currently engaged in, he and Raphael had always worked well together in the air. There had never been time for emotions when it came to flying - stopping and thinking might mean stopping and dying, Adamo had said once. Everything had to be instinctive or there was no point going up at all.

He and Cassie had just taken out what looked like half a Ke’Han regiment with a fiery dive that ducked under their magician’s sideways wind trap when Niall got hit. Bad timing and a second’s worth of awkward manoeuvres meant some of Cassiopeia’s sparks got caught up in that Ke’Han wind and swept off course - they would have deflected harmlessly off Erdeni’s wing except that she was trying to turn out of the blue coil of wind and so the projectile embers hit Niall’s shoulder on one of her downbeats instead. Erdeni span, screeched, and wheeled around two tight, fast circles, her inside wing beating from the mid-joint only where she’d braced its lower branch like a shield wall, keeping Niall from falling.

Then Adamo was there, Proudmouth having shot through what remained of the wind faster than Ivory had ever seen a Crusher fly, and there was the signal to retreat; Proudmouth flying so close to Erdeni that Ivory thought their wings were going to collide. It happened too fast and too slow: afterwards Ivory remembered tiny details better than the order of events - the scraping, copper yawp of Erdeni’s screech and the amber bright scintilla of the flare as it hit Niall’s shoulder. He remembered the way the smoke huffed lazily from Cassiopeia’s mouth and the happy gurgle of relief deep in his stomach when he saw Raphael and Natalia had got the signal and were turning for home.

He remembered the searing stench of burnt flesh carried back on the breeze.

When they landed, it was with a slither and a scrape into an echoing, grey hustle of too many hands and not enough voices. The dragon pens felt too open and wide, their handlers too few; the commands too basic. Smoke and metal rang in Ivory’s ears, and he watched, feeling like he was unstitched from his own world, as Adamo handed Proudmouth and Erdeni over to their handlers, scraped Niall up and snapped something at Raphael before disappearing.

“Ivory?” Raphael’s gloved, soot-blackened fingers touched his shoulder, and Ivory jumped, glared. He’d dismounted, at some point, but was still standing at Cassie’s shoulder, clinging to the reins. Raphael, for once, didn’t flinch. “You should shower,” he said softly. “I’ve to fetch Luvander and take him to the hospital. All right?” he added carefully, and slowly reached across to unpeel Ivory’s fingers from the harness. Ivory hadn’t realised how tightly they’d been clenched. The steady, familiar thrum of Raphael’s heartbeat close to his own body brought his senses back into acute, shuddering clarity, and when Raphael had successfully freed his fingers, Ivory slid them into his palm. “All right?” Raphael whispered again.

Ivory swallowed, breathed out through his nose, and let the hot, arid perfume of the dragon pens reconnect him to the ground. “I’m all right,” he said, and then leaned over to tuck an ashy, greasy kiss at the edge of Raphael’s jaw.

“Shall I come to your room when I’m back,” Raphael asked, low and hopeful. Ivory nodded, and then Cassiopeia heaved a belching, smoky sigh and snorted impatiently; flicking their ankles delicately with the very tip of her sooty tail.

~

“Fuck,” was the first thing Luvander said when they finally let him into Niall’s sick room, a big, hearty slap of a word in the sterile silence, smearing everywhere and reverberating off the tiled walls, but Niall was asleep, pale and wan, his whole left shoulder and arm covered in a few inches of thick, herbal smelling paste. He didn’t wake when Luvander swore a little more, neither did he stir when Luvander threw himself on his right side and put his face in his neck, clutching at the sheets.

“I didn’t tell you,” Luvander whispered, hysteria rising in his throat like bile, “you got hit and I didn’t tell you, I didn’t say it back, I love you, oh fuck, bastion balls fuck, you could have been _killed_ , I love you.”

Niall’s chest shifted under Luvander’s ear and he coughed, his good hand coming up to weakly pet Luvander’s hair.

“Easy there, champ,” he slurred, sounding like his throat had been burned to cinders by Erdeni’s fire. “I’m a fucking invalid, pretty sure you’re not supposed to be - on me.”

“Fuck you,” Luvander gasped, a cross between a sob and a laugh, “fuck me, fuck.”

“Mm, such a filthy mouth,” Niall murmured, coughing again, “doesn’t suit you at all. I love it. My prim and proper - boyfriend in tears and swearwords over my - poor abused body. Heh.”

He yelped when Luvander punched his still uninjured shoulder and let loose another barrage of swearing and berating him for nearly dying, something in his chest coming loose at last like a stone stuck in the sole of his boot, sliding free on an unseemly oil slick of tears down Luvander’s cheeks and burrowing into the sheets between his clenched fingers.

“Now, now,” Niall’s fingers rubbed limply through Luvander’s hair and got stuck, as if they had only possessed enough energy for one small surge of comfort. “Surely you’re not crying over little old me?”

“You could have died,” Luvander repeated, his own voice throaty and raw now as well, the sulphuric hot reminder that what they did as airmen meant literally playing with fire mussing his head, a potent incense brewed from the smoke that clung to Niall’s hair and the bitter fennel and aniseed scent of the paste on his arm. It felt like ash in Luvander’s mouth and turned his words charcoal. “You could have died.”

“Nah,” Niall heaved in a breath of let it out in another dry, grey bark of a cough. “Takes more than a wayward dragon spitball to kill me.”

“Your mum will be so cross with me,” Luvander sobbed again. “She told me to look out for you.”

“Did she really?” Niall hummed, a thin thread of amusement stitched through the hoarse ache of his tone. “Well, you’re here now crying over your injured sweetheart soldier, so I think you’re doing your job just fine.”

“Does anything ever ruin your good mood?” Luvander pressed his nose against the warm flesh of Niall’s neck and breathed him in, the clean, carbolic smell that was hospital soap and perfunctory, medicinal hygiene not quite strong enough to mask the warm, woodsy, lazy Sunday skin that he was so familiar with.

“Not really,” Niall admitted, conveniently forgetting his vile bad temper over having a cold a few weeks ago. “Tell you what might though,” he whispered, turning his face very carefully to the side and wincing against the pull on his scalded skin. He pressed his mouth to the top of Luvander’s head and continued: “if you pretend you didn’t say you love me when we get back home in the cold light of day. That might be a bit of a downer.”

~

Ivory’s room was dark when he let Raphael in, a quiet slice of moonlight tiptoeing through the curtains in a single tiger stripe on the floor. The entire Airman was quiet, in a way it rarely was, even at this hour. Somehow, the building seemed to know that all was not well, and had cocooned her inhabitants in a protective, muffling cotton wool.

“Are you all right?” Raphael murmured, and Ivory didn’t answer.

For a minute, neither of them said anything at all, and Raphael listened to the steady drum of his own heartbeat. Then: “it was my fault,” Ivory said, and his voice was white and pale and flat like the keys of his beloved piano.

Raphael frowned. “What was your fault?” he asked carefully.

Ivory swallowed, the moonlight catching the bob of his throat like a gleam on the edge of a piece of silver. “It was Cassie’s fire,” he said, his eyes on the floor and the same dull, blunt edge to his tone. “That’s what hit Niall. So it was my fault. Wasn’t it?”

It was the fact that Raphael didn’t immediately start protesting like he did when Ivory was unhappy with his piano playing and Raphael insisted all his music was beautiful and infallible that comforted Ivory the most. Instead, Raphael took his face in his hands and looked very seriously at him, making sure that Ivory’s eyes held his gaze before he answered.

“No, it wasn’t,” he said simply, and somehow, Ivory believed him.

“Can you stay,” he whispered, tilting forward on his toes until his forehead was pressed against Raphael’s and fisting his hands in the front of Raphael’s shirt. He squeezed his eyes shut and willed his knees to stop trembling, and then Raphael caught him up in his arms, steadying him, one hand warm and reassuring between the wings of his shoulder blades and one in the small of his back.

“Of course,” he said, “if you want me to.”

“I need you to,” Ivory found himself replying, and his voice sounded so unlike him that he pressed his lips together and buried his face in Raphael’s neck, embarrassed. Raphael just gathered him closer and tucked one hand under Ivory’s shirt, tracing his spine before settling on the swell of his hipbone, cupping it, and though it wasn’t a sexual gesture at all, Ivory felt a tingly stab of arousal in the small of his back, making him arch up on tiptoes again and desperately roll his hips against Raphael’s.

“Hmm,” Raphael hummed, holding him tight, “there anything else you need me to do for you tonight, maybe?”

He kissed up Ivory’s temple, slow and open-mouthed, the tip of his tongue darting out to lick at the sensitive skin there, and Ivory’s whole body shivered.

“The, what we did last time,” Ivory whispered.

“You want to fuck me again?” Raphael murmured into his hair, and Ivory could feel him smirking against his scalp. The hand on Ivory’s hip slid lower, under his waistband, thumb swirling in teasing circly delight.

“Yes,” Ivory said, then, arching up against Raphael again, “no, I want you to -”

“Want me to what?” Raphael whispered, drawing back and removing the hand under his waistband to find Ivory’s chin and pry his face out from where Ivory was hiding it against his shirt. “Tell me.”

“I want to try,” Ivory said, his mouth twisting into a bitter lemon peel shape as he tried to gather the words under his tongue, “what I promised you. That you could. Do. To me.”

“You want me to fuck you?” Raphael murmured, his words so gentle and quiet in the cool air of Ivory’s room, running down his spine with tender fingertips, prodding; and Ivory nodded, because he did want that, and there was heat in his belly like he’d rarely felt before.

Then Raphael kissed him, and pushed both hands into the back of Ivory’s trousers, cupping his arse, and Ivory moaned as all that heat fizzled and sparked like raindrops on a bonfire. Raphael kissed him the same way he smirked when he was feeling peculiarly confident about something - often, Ivory had noticed, right before he tripped over his own feet or walked into something - it was bold and smug and utterly filthy, completely indecent, and at the same time entirely casual. He had no idea how Raphael was able to do all that at once and yet, there it was, in the twist of his lips and the nudge of his tongue against Ivory’s teeth.

He walked them slowly, lazily, back to Ivory’s bed without breaking that kiss until they got there, when his hands came back to Ivory’s hip bones and gave a little shove. The moment Ivory’s backside hit the mattress Raphael was kneeling over him, threading the buttons of his pyjama shirt through their holes, the rough, callused edges of his thumbs brushing against Ivory’s chest. The warmth licked up inside Ivory from his stomach and fanned across his chest, making him catch his breath when Raphael’s finger tip grazed a nipple. That tiny curl of arousal blossomed, shot through his body like a forest fire in drought season, and Ivory felt something like hysteria bloom in his chest.

“Are you, you’ve,” he stammered, “you’ve - before - like this?”

“Mm,” Raphael hummed, with his mouth against the soft line of Ivory’s jaw. “Indeed I have.”

“Okay,” Ivory swallowed, “okay. And it’s - the people you’ve - had - are they, were they--”

“Are you trying to ask me if I’m good at it,” Raphael was definitely smirking again, and Ivory had to press his own lips together and dig his heels into the carpet a bit, because that wasn’t fair, and he wanted this thing but he wanted to _know,_ without having to know _too much_ , about Raphael’s experience doing this with bodies like Ivory’s. “Because I’ll have you know, Airman Ivory,” Raphael was still purring, “my romance is not all about poetry and flowers.” He punctuated this with a nip at the side of Ivory’s neck, and Ivory gripped his fingers in the sheets, tugging them into little linen peaks under his knuckles.

“Nooo,” Ivory whined, “no, not - I meant - have you, were the others, were they like me?”

Raphael stopped, pulled back a moment and cupped one of his broad hands around Ivory’s chin, pressing his thumb gently against Ivory’s lips. His eyes were round and serious, and the sliver of moonlight glanced off his skin and made it shimmer icy grey like Cassie’s scales. “No one’s like you, Ivory,” he said, almost reverently.

Awkwardly, Ivory plucked at his sheets. “I mean had they done this before, too,” he forced himself to make, feeling juvenile and embarrassed, the hot wave of arousal still flush in his cheeks and flickering in his gut.

“I don’t know, actually,” Raphael told him, lightly. “There’s only a couple. One of them definitely knew what he was about and the other,” he shrugged one of his shoulders, “I’ve really no idea. Why?” he asked carefully.

Ivory shook his head.

“I’ll go gentle, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Raphael whispered, bringing his mouth up to Ivory’s ear, his breath warm and tickling like a balmy summer night in the countryside. “Make sure you’re completely relaxed and comfortable and then take it - or rather, you,” he amended with a flick of his tongue against Ivory’s earlobe, “nice and slow. Wrap my arms around you and hold you steady, is that what you want? Is that how you’d like it to be?”

Ivory shivered.

“Yes,” he managed to confess, half in a whisper and half in a whine. “Yes, please.”

Raphael drew back a little again and looked down at him for a little while, eyes all soft and fond like when Merritt’s stammer got especially noticeable or when Ace had managed to injure himself again and was sheepish about it.

“Any time you need me to stop,” he said, serious again, “I’ll stop.”

“I know,” Ivory said, because he did know, and he trusted Raphael. He wasn’t worried about Raphael having his way with him, he was worried about letting Raphael have his way with him and _enjoy_ _ing_ it, and at the same time, he was worried about being completely unaffected and failing to perform what was clearly the norm when someone was having their way with you, but he couldn’t _say_ that, of course, so he just bit his lip and shrugged out of his shirt.

Raphael kept good on his promise to go slow.

He started by kissing Ivory again, sweet and teasing at first and then progressively filthier again, until Ivory was squirming under him and grappling at his shoulders, wanting him to do _something_ at least. Raphael smirked against his lips, then kissed and licked his way down Ivory’s throat and collarbone, letting his teeth graze the spots where Ivory’s skin was the most translucent and sensitive and making Ivory gasp before he moved on to his nipples and gave them the same reverent treatment. When it got too much for Ivory, Raphael duly stopped, and went back to soft, wet kisses down Ivory’s quivery stomach, until at last he reached his waistband and slid his fingers under it again, pulling slightly.

“Okay?” he asked, looking up at Ivory with kiss-dark lips and eyes cast in unruly darkness, his hair already dishevelled where Ivory had run his fingers through it. Ivory shivered, nodded, and watched as Raphael lovingly tugged his trousers off, sat back on his haunches on the floor, and then abruptly yanked him forward on the mattress until Ivory’s crotch was lined up with his face.

A tiny smirk stole across his lips as he mouthed his way up Ivory’s thigh, hands tucked into the backs of his knees.

“You know,” he said conversationally, his tongue darting out to lazily lick the head of Ivory’s cock, “I’ve been carrying this around with me for a week. Just in case.”

He produced a small jar from his pocket and twirled it in his fingers. Its silver lid caught the light from the single lamp that he had lit on the bedside table at some point without Ivory noticing. His fingers kept playing with it as Raphael lowered his head to take him in his mouth, and Ivory’s hips jerked off the mattress as Raphael sucked hard, toes curling around the bottom edge of the bed. He barely heard himself gasping. Raphael released him again with a loud, wet, obscene pop, licked up his balls and bit down gently on the inside of his thigh, then unscrewed the lid on the jar and swallowed him down again, holding his hips down with his other hand as Ivory helplessly bucked up once more.

“You taste so good,” Raphael said, his voice half a whine and half a whisper, and when Ivory looked down at him kneeling between his legs, hair askew and face flushed, nuzzling Ivory’s thigh and giving his cock a few idle strokes with his thumb rubbing over the tip, his stomach felt like it was being turned inside out and upside down, but in an entirely pleasant way.

“You really like… licking things,” Ivory mumbled, a little bit awed, and Raphael smiled and licked his cock from base to tip, his mouth wide open and his eyes closed, saliva running down his chin.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ivory whispered and let his head thunk back down on the mattress, his hips straining in Raphael’s grasp.

“Mm,” Raphael hummed, “not yet.”

And then he gently lifted up Ivory’s legs, hooked them over his shoulders and got back to licking things again, though this time, his tongue squirmed further down, between Ivory’s cheeks and over his hole, wet and hot and like he knew exactly what he was doing, and Ivory made one of the loudest, most wanton noises he had ever heard himself make, both out of surprise and because Raphael’s thumbs were pulling his cheeks apart and his shoulders were firm and steady in the backs of his knees and he was, fuck, so good, with his tongue, doing things Ivory would have never believed capable of producing such noisy arousal in him, but there he was.

“Huh,” Raphael whispered, pulling away and rubbing his little finger over Ivory’s spit-slick hole, “interesting.”

Ivory turned his head and keened against the sheets.

Raphael continued, his mouth one wet, wicked smirk between Ivory’s legs, and Ivory flung one arm over his eyes because he felt less exposed if he couldn’t see, especially now he had realised Raphael had switched on a light. A rich litany of filthy sounds dribbled out of his mouth, tones and tempo he hadn’t known he even possessed, but Raphael’s tongue was apparently capable of wringing them out of him, playing him like a well-tuned instrument between the fingers of a virtuoso.

Fingers. Yes. Whether by some unknown skill in thought transference or happy coincidence, Raphael chose that moment to trail one dripping, lubed up finger up between Ivory’s cheeks, slinking his tongue back up over his balls and then kissing the base of his cock. Ivory squirmed, his toes curling against the unexpectedly cold lube after the heat of Raphael’s mouth, except then Raphael gently nudged the tip of one finger inside him and Ivory’s mouth made a noise a bit like “hgnmmn” as he bit down on his lower lip.

“So,” Raphael murmured happily against the inside of Ivory’s thigh, and wiggled that finger tip a minute amount. The dark hint of day-old stubble scraped Ivory’s delicate skin. “That’s a thing.”

“Don’t,” Ivory started, and then gasped and Raphael moved his finger again, pushing a little deeper inside. “Don’t know what you’re - hmmnngn - talking about.”

“Is that so,” Raphael hummed casually, crooking his finger and easing it in to the second knuckle. Ivory bit down on the urge to whine in the back of his throat, but made the mistake of flopping his arm away from his face and glancing down just as Raphael looked up from pressing a wet kiss to the crook of Ivory’s groin. His smug mouth was shiny and red, chin damp and glistening in the shadowy glance of the lamplight, and he winked.

That was about the point where Ivory forgot about what little dignity he might have still possessed, and gave up on any foolish ideas he’d had about controlling himself in this situation. He swallowed audibly, gathered his breath up like courage in his chest, and reached down to dig his fingers into Raphael’s fuzzy, wanton mop of hair. “You seem to have stopped,” he said with the flicker of an eyebrow to make up for the way his voice trembled, and tugged on a helpless ringlet. “Why’ve you stopped?”

So Raphael continued.

By the third finger, Ivory was a damp, quivering, smeary mess, and his lower lip was smarting where he dug his teeth in, a flimsy barricade against the onslaught of obscene sounds spilling from his throat. Raphael was back to sucking idly on his cock, and he’d found an angle for his fingers that was just right and kept to that. Ivory wasn’t even sure why it felt so damn good, because for all intents and purposes it shouldn’t have, but somehow this was just what he needed tonight, and he dug his heels into Raphael’s back and his hands into his hair and went with it.

“Raph,” he said, and his voice sounded so very wrecked even to his own ears, “can you, I need you to, not take it slow. Now.”

“I’m already three fingers deep, Ivory, we’re long past the point of taking things slow,” Raphael murmured, amused, but then his fingers were gone and he gently eased Ivory’s legs off his shoulders and swung them onto the bed before climbing after them. He pulled his shirt and trousers off like an afterthought, and Ivory watched the soft ripple of his muscles as he moved and all of a sudden felt overstimulated and on edge, self-awareness roiling once more in his gut like nausea.

“Wait,” he managed to say just as Raphael finished putting on a condom he had brought and tossing his clothes away. “I’m - I changed my mind. I need a minute.”

“Okay,” Raphael said easily, stretching out beside him. “No rush.”

Ivory curled onto his side, breathing hard. He felt sore and shaky, slick between his legs with lube and spit and sweat, and his own heartbeat was thudding in his ears and in his cock. When he moved, the mattress and sheets slid along his heated skin and he shivered, thought about Raphael’s tongue between his legs, wreaking gentle havoc.

“We don’t have to do this tonight,” Raphael told him quietly, “or at all, if you’re not up for it.”

Ivory looked at him for a long moment and smiled.

“I want to,” he whispered, “I just don’t know how.”

Raphael, who had stopped touching him when Ivory had asked for the break, now reached out and twined their fingers together, almost like a question.

“You don’t have to do anything,” he murmured.

“I don’t know how to do that, either,” Ivory admitted and shut his eyes before he said the next words. “Please fuck me.”

He felt rather than saw Raphael shiver beside him. Then Raphael moved, eased himself in between Ivory’s legs and kissed his forehead, adjusted their position, stroked his palm down over Ivory’s thigh.

“Ivory,” he said, “look at me.”

So Ivory looked at him, and found Raphael’s face was pink and tender, his eyes dark bruises of concern. He looked younger in the awkward half shadow of the lamp and the last grey slice of night that was still feeding through the chink in Ivory’s curtains. Younger, and smaller, and like he was balanced on the edge of something momentous. He tucked one hand under Ivory’s head, cupping the back of his skull and rubbing his fingers there, soft and soothing moon shapes. “Okay?” he breathed.

“Okay,” Ivory managed, and dug his fingers into Raphael’s shoulders for support.

“You need to relax, sweetheart,” Raphael told him with half a smile, and leaned down to kiss the corner of his jaw, the side of his neck, the proud jut of his collarbone and the edge of his mouth. “Just stop thinking so much. Like when you’re flying.”

Ivory closed his eyes again and took a deep, steadying breath, summoned the comforting breach of Cassiopeia’s flanks between his thighs, the easy swoop and rise of her wings on either side of him; the instinctive knowledge of where to weight himself and what to do with his hands. He breathed out, slowly, feeling his hips and shoulders untense, his knees falling open a little further, and then Raphael was reaching down between them and touching him again and easing the heavy tip of his penis inside Ivory.

It wasn’t much different than three fingers, Ivory thought absently, except then it was: a whole lot different, and Ivory felt his muscles stretching and smoothing themselves into uncommon shapes inside his body but not, he realised, protesting this invasion. Raphael’s cock was fatter than his fingers and that felt strange and thick, and Ivory shifted a tiny bit, trying to adjust himself to this new sensation. Raphael held himself still, propped on his knees and one elbow, his other hand still cradling Ivory’ head. “Still okay?” he checked.

“Mm,” Ivory flexed his knees experimentally, realigned his hips again and consciously forced his body to go limp. He was still hard, that was good. If he let himself unclench all over, it felt good to be this close to Raphael, to be connected like this, to be so incredibly intimate.

Also, he realised frantically, hilarious. A breathless bubble of laughter spilled over his lips in a silvery whisper. “You’re inside me,” he observed, and would have been appalled at himself for the miniature giggle which chimed from his mouth afterwards, if he’d had anything spare to be appalled with.

“Yes, I am,” Raphael agreed, amusement lurking somewhere on the back of his tongue. “How’s that feel?”

Ivory sighed softly, and nodded, once. “Nice,” he confessed. “Strange, but nice. I like this - being this close to you.”

“I’m not hurting you?” Raphael fretted, and Ivory rubbed a circle into the back of his shoulder. Raphael’s muscles were curved and toned and warm; flying had been good to him.

Ivory shook his head.

“Okay,” Raphael breathed, licked his lips, and said “then, if it’s all right with you, I’ll keep going?”

He shifted as he spoke, readjusting his weight further back on to his knees, and a spark of pleasure ricocheted up Ivory’s spine like one of the fireworks they sent up from the Basquiat at new year’s. He gasped and snatched his hand over his mouth when it let loose another one of those feral, high-pitched noises it had been so liberal with before, the traitor. He looked at Raphael, his eyes wide and pupils dilated, breath shallow in his throat and the tingling drag of that sharp, violet pleasure still vibrating down his legs.

“Mmhm,” Raphael smirked, and Ivory’s stomach did a merry somersault.

Then Raphael leaned forward until his mouth was next to Ivory’s ear and whispered: “Don’t you stop making those gorgeous noises now, love.”

He pushed inside him again, rolling his hips, until they were aligned crotch to chest, and Ivory moaned, low and helpless. He kept his hand over his mouth, but it didn’t stop the sounds from escaping, like sand through his fingers, as Raphael found a gentle, rocking pace and wrapped one hand around his cock again, lightly teasing. He didn’t mind when Raphael tugged the hand away at last, linking their fingers again and pushing Ivory’s knuckles into the pillow beside his head, going just a little bit faster but still doing that twisty thing with his hips that made something in Ivory’s stomach vibrate like a purr. Ivory kept his other hand on Raphael’s shoulder, nails nipping at skin and leaving a little comet trail of half-moon shapes. Raphael, too, was mewling tiny grunty sounds in Ivory’s ear now, different from the ones he had made when Ivory had fucked him, but they still pooled in the base of his spine like the little sparks that jumped and twitched on Cassiopeia’s scales when she was about to breathe fire.

“Raphael,” Ivory gasped, fisting his hand in the damp curls at the back of Raphael’s head and pulling slightly, which in turn made Raphael moan, “Raph, I’m…”

He didn’t finish, but Raphael seemed to understand and moved his hand to give Ivory’s cock a few jerks, squeezing him tight in the circle of his fingers. Ivory arched into his fist and Raphael slowed down, pushing in deep but only circling his hips a bit now, nudging at just the right place as he jerked him off fast, and Ivory keened, bucked, and came, legs wide and fingers tight in the fabric of the pillow and Raphael’s hair.

“Oh,” Raphael whimpered dimly above him. He fucked him through his orgasm, sped up for a moment and then slowed again, before pulling out completely and collapsing shakily onto his side next to Ivory to catch his breath.

“Okay?” he asked again and fumbled the condom off with unsteady fingers. Now sleepy, Ivory watched him through half-closed eyes and nodded.

“Yes,” he said, more resigned than surprised to find his voice hoarse and broken, “I just really need another shower.”

“Yeah, you do,” Raphael mumbled smugly and shifted closer, as close to Ivory as he could get without touching him. “So do I, to be honest. But. Tired.”

“What time is it? Is there any risk of running into one of the early risers if we go now?”

“Too damn early,” Raphael said, and then added: “though it’s not the early risers you should be worried about. Bet we just woke up at least half the corridor…”

He sounded so terrifically pleased about this that it took a while for what he was implying to register in Ivory’s brain, which twisted from vague sleepy contentment to abject horror when it finally did, like a shrinking violet at the touch of a hand. He’d always assumed that their rooms were more or less sound-proof, since normal conversation and the sounds of daily life were easily swallowed up by the Airman’s thick walls if the doors were closed, but he hadn’t even been thinking about that tonight, much less paid any attention to who might have been trying to sleep next door.

“Just kill me now,” Ivory croaked weakly, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling of his room and re-familiarising himself with the desperate wish to sink into the floor and cease to exist.

~

“I brought you breakfast,” was the first thing Niall heard when he dragged his eyes open against the harsh light of the room in the Rittenhouse, and took a moment to reorient himself. His body ached and his brain felt half numb, the skin on his left side tight and straining like fabric pulled so tight it puckered. Niall resented waking up slowly. It made him feel disconnected from himself, alienated from his own body.

At least Luvander was there.

“You better eat,” he was saying. “Chief wants to see you soon and bastion knows what he’ll have to say. Also, I’ve got gossip.”

“How,” Niall whined, blinking into the bright white glare of the room and struggling to bring Luvander into focus. He was wearing the scarf Niall had given him at Christmas and, if Niall wasn’t horribly mistaken, one of his jumpers, too. “How have you got gossip between whatever time you left and - now, how is that possible.”

“It’s later than you think, sleeping beauty,” Luvander hummed softly. “I know you’re one of these,” he pulled his mouth to the side in distaste, “morning people, but not today.”

Whatever the nurse had given Niall to make him sleep when she’d come to scold Luvander for being on his bed and politely but firmly insist he needed to go home, had obviously been far more potent than Niall had realised. He scrunched his face up in contempt, and felt the ache shoot down his neck and into his shoulder.

“I’ve brought you brioche and the finest, freshest celebrity news you could ask for,” Luvander was still saying chirpily. “Here, let me help you sit up.”

“I don’t need help,” Niall protested, but he was wrong, and reluctantly grateful for Luvander’s assistance in rearranging pillows and settling him back against them. He fluttered the tiny wings of a kiss against the top of Niall’s head, and Niall had to find Luvander’s sleeve with his good arm and cling for a second.

“All right?” Luvander whispered into his hair.

“I love you,” Niall choked. There was a sharp twinge in his left side, and he’d realised he was still smothered in the herbal poultice, which had dried and compacted while he slept like cement on his skin. No wonder it felt tight.

“You can wash soon,” Luvander murmured soothingly, and then, visibly hesitating, swallowed and added in a whisper: “I love you too.”

Something in Niall’s chest went tight like it had been covered in the same poultice as his shoulder and he had to bury his face in Luvander’s neck for a moment, which smelled like clean linen, freshly brewed coffee and warm yeast dough. He took a deep, fortifying breath, then extracted himself and looked down at the tray of food Luvander had placed in his lap, choosing to take a sip of whatever dark brew was in the large, chipped mug. It came from the Airman kitchen and it was Niall’s favourite, because it had a blurry ensemble of dancing ladies painted wonkily on its outside, their stockinged feet thrown high in the air and their smiling faces smeared into distorted grimaces by the runny paint, in short, it was a hideous piece of work, and Niall loved it. It must have cost Luvander something to extract it from Compagnon’s coffee-greedy hands this morning.

“Thanks,” he croaked, swallowing another mouthful of the strong, sugary tea Luvander had made him. The only time Niall drank it with lemon instead of milk was when he was feeling hungover, and Luvander had added a generous squeeze and an extra spoonful of sugar today, which Niall appreciated, because he did feel kind of like someone had removed the contents of his brain and replaced them with Ke’Han wine instead that had soured over night.

“So, about that gossip,” Niall said when he’d taken a large bite of brioche and offered the rest to Luvander, who bit guiltily into it and then licked the icing off his lips in rapturous delight, making Niall forget altogether that he was supposed to be eating.

“Mm, yes,” Luvander agreed, pursing his lips. “I ran into Raphael and Ivory in the corridor just now. They had the most atrocious sex hair and Raphael was basically glowing with smug, until he tripped on Merritt’s boots at least and fell on his face, but, you know Fae. He definitely got some last night, if you ask me.”

“Sweeeeeet,” Niall sighed, shakily holding up his good hand for a high five. “I need to high five that later, but you’ll do for now, come on, put it right there, I know you want to.”

Luvander complied, though careful not to jostle Niall’s injured side, and sneaked another piece of brioche from Niall’s plate, popping it into his mouth with a smack of his lips.

“How was our dear Ivory looking, then?” Niall wanted to know.

“Terrifically awkward,” Luvander said as if relishing the words. “And I thought he was walking a bit funny…”

Niall cackled and demanded another high five. Then he fed some more brioche to his boyfriend, who protested weakly that they were for him, and duly made short work of the bowl of fruit that Luvander had brought alongside the brioches.

It was in this sticky, fruity, giggling mess that Adamo found them fifteen minutes later. Luvander was feeding Niall the last segment of orange from his fingers, perched on the edge of the bed with one leg tucked up underneath him.

Adamo cleared his throat and gravely said “Airmen” to catch their attention. Gratifyingly, Luvander nearly fell off the bed with a tiny parroty squawk. Niall grinned.

“Morning Chief,” he said cheerfully, “or afternoon, apparently. Look how alive I still am.”

“So you are,” Adamo agreed, sounding rather like he was displeased about this, although the warm fleck of relief which skittered across his face like a wayward spider suggested otherwise. “Do you remember what happened?”

Niall attempted to shrug nonchalantly, and caught himself up in a wince and a quiet, cobwebby gasp. “I was definitely on fire,” he said. “Ace will be so jealous.”

“Let’s not exaggerate,” Adamo frowned. “Nonetheless, the magicians will be looking into some means of making our flight gear dragon flame retardant. I’m told there will be a way, apparently for every Talent there is an equal and opposing Talent, so it’s a case of establishing how to harness that particular magic and stitch it into the cloth on our backs.” His frown deepened, carved itself out into a scowl as if he disapproved of magic entirely. “Erdeni is worried about you.”

“Is she,” Niall’s voice softened, went warm and syrupy the way it did in bed sometimes, when he was feeling especially tender or tired. Luvander’s stomach scrunched itself into a spiky little ball for a second, and he closed his eyes to keep that inside. “My poor girl,” Niall was murmuring. “Can I see her?”

Adamo nodded. “As soon as the medics say you can leave. There’ll be no peace from her otherwise, she tried to bite my leg off when I promised her you were doing fine.”

Niall’s face curled itself into a grin.

“I’m signing you off for two weeks,” Adamo ignored this. “You can stay in the Airman if you want to, but I’d recommend going to your mother’s for some rest.”

“WHAT,” Niall exploded, “but why, I’m fine, I’ll be fine when they scrape this muck off me, honestly, it’s just a little burn, Chief.”

Adamo’s eyes narrowed. “I’d prefer you take the chance to make sure it really _is_ just a little burn than send you up again too early and find you can’t steer with one arm.”

“But,” Niall started weakly.

“Those are my orders, Airman,” Adamo snapped. “Two weeks.”

Niall pouted, but didn’t argue, which was how Luvander knew that whatever he said, he wasn’t feeling completely well. The dried scent of the paste felt itchy and stiff, like he was going to sneeze but hadn’t quite got there yet. The thought of two weeks without Niall at the Airman made Luvander’s chest hurt and his stomach ache, even though he agreed with Adamo. He squeezed Niall’s fingers and murmured “you should go to your mum’s. I’ll visit when I’m not on duty.”

“Ugh,” was all the complaint Niall had to offer, and he slumped into his pillows, dissatisfied at the mouth like he’d just swallowed a mouthful of sour beer.

“If I see your name up on that rota before the two weeks are up, I won’t hesitate to roast your ass,” Adamo warned him, then nodded at Luvander, turned on his heel and marched out.

“Boy oh boy,” Niall sighed, “he sure is hot when he gets all commanding.”

“And here I was just going to try and cheer you up with a few ideas as to what we might get up to at your mum’s while I visit you,” Luvander said drily. “Guess I’ll have to send the chief over instead and amuse myself with Holly in the meantime.”

Niall wailed, and if any airmen had still been asleep before that, well, they weren’t anymore now, but somehow, Luvander couldn’t really muster any sympathy for them.

~

No one had said a thing over breakfast.

Ivory was so unnerved by this that he went to hide out in Cassie’s pen after he had forced himself to eat some toast under Raphael’s watchful gaze, paranoid that he could feel everyone looking at him and _knowing_ , but even Jeannot’s eyebrow had only twitched a little bit when Ivory had glanced his way. Quiet airmen were a rare thing, though, and Ivory found it far more likely that they were just biding their time to descend upon him than that he might actually get away unscathed, or that their bedrooms really were as soundproof as he’d thought.

In the end, he went for a stompy little walk, shoulders hunched up against the drizzle, half enjoying the lingering, gentle burn of Raphael’s stubble on the sensitive insides of his thighs, and when he came back, he made himself a large cup of green tea and filled a second mug with plain black, stopping by the kitchen for some milk before he went to knock on Luvander’s door.

“Oh,” he said, blinking when Luvander opened the door and peered out, “I thought you might not be in… here, I brought you tea.”

“You… brought me tea?” Luvander repeated, looking suspicious. “And it’s not poisoned? Or dog piss? Or…”

“It’s just tea,” Ivory insisted impatiently and shoved the mug at Luvander before squeezing past him into the room. The light was on, and there was an unfinished letter on the table which Luvander hastened to clear away as Ivory sat down on the floor, leaning back against Luvander’s bed with his tea cradled in his hands.

“Who were you -?”

“No one,” Luvander said, “well, Niall, if you must know. His mum is picking him up tonight to take him home for a couple of weeks while his shoulder heals, and I… well. I packed his things for him and thought I’d. Well. Doesn’t matter. How are you?”

“Oh, I see,” Ivory grinned, “you were writing him a dirty letter to tide him over until your next visit, were you not?”

Luvander cleared his throat.

“Well. Possibly. Speaking of dirty things, though…”

Ivory’s face snapped back to a serious, unnerving deadpan.

“You’ve never come to talk to me about anything,” Luvander pointed out. “So I can only assume you need to confess some sinful secret about why, exactly, you were walking like you’d sat on one of Cassiopeia’s spikes this morning. Since the only things I’m qualified to give advice about are sex and fashion and you didn’t come to ask me about fashion, did you.”

“No,” Ivory admitted, “I did not.”

“So,” Luvander grinned, proud of himself, and settled back against the army of cushions which were permanently invading his armchair. “Make yourself comfortable. If you can.”

Ivory got up and went over to the window. He pressed his mug of still steaming green tea against his cheek before realising that this was something he’d picked up from Raphael, and immediately balancing it on the windowsill instead. Outside, Volstov was in full spring bloom, bursting her pink and white way into early summer. Blossom had danced a brief duet with budding leaves and bolder flowers before giving way and retiring gracelessly to the streets in a clutter of faded colour and muted velvet. Looking down from Luvander’s window, Ivory could see all the way down to the rooftops of Lower Charlotte, which was slowly being swallowed by the flourish of pale green and yellow on the trees which lined its avenues.

“Hypothetically,” he said, carefully, keeping his back to Luvander to make this easier, “if a person who is absolutely not anyone we know, were to, hm,” he frowned, pressed his lips together, and swallowed. He wasn’t entirely sure why he felt like he couldn’t just ask Raphael this, apart from that being near Raphael this afternoon would feel raw and overexposed. Ivory needed a half day of space, he’d realised, to remember how to look at Raphael without feeling him inside him like an aching echo. “If a hypothetical person were to have a bit of trouble with, um, an itch,” he tried again, “or maybe - a rash…”

“Is the itchy rash also hypothetical?” Luvander drawled.

“Yes,” Ivory scowled at the rooftops and traced a drop of rain down the glass. It was only drizzling and would pass over soon enough, or so Ghislain had said cheerfully that morning. “What might they do with that, though,” he asked, soft and faintly angry.

“Depends,” Luvander stretched, Ivory could hear him grinning and lolling against his cushions and regretted this decision with every part of his soul. “Depends where that hypothetical rash is and what may have hypothetically caused it.”

“Beard,” Ivory said curtly, “thighs. Inner. And… nearby.”

“Hypothetically,” Luvander smirked again, slowly.

“It’s for a friend,” Ivory snapped.

Luvander chuckled, sighed contentedly and reminded him that “Which friend?” he demanded. “I’m right here, and you don’t have facial hair so unless your man’s been sitting on some other bearded face recently…”

“I said it’s not anyone you know,” Ivory growled, gripping the handle of his mug so tightly he could feel the bones of his knuckles protesting. “It’s not anyone at all, it’s just--”

“Hypotheses, yes,” Luvander nodded. “Some very specific possibilities you - sorry, your friend - wants to prepare for.”

“Yes, that,” Ivory agreed, leaning his forehead against the cool window glass. Absently, he added: “Bastion, am I glad that I’m not on the rota for tonight.”

“Because of the itch?” Luvander said slyly.

“Because of the _rain_ ,” Ivory quickly amended and rolled his eyes in a show of fake nonchalance. “Really, Luvander, anyone would think you weren’t listening.”

“Oh, I was listening very closely,” Luvander grinned, “one could even say I was reading. Between the lines. Or thighs, as it were. Anyways. Tell your hypothetical friend to put some hypothetical cream on his hypothetical rash, the kind that they give out to people with hay allergies and the like. You can, hypothetically, get them at every hypothetical apothecary, there wouldn’t even need to be any mention of hypothetical beards.”

“I could, hypothetically, stab you,” Ivory reminded him, but Luvander waved this off.

“I am hypothetically aware of that, my dear. Have you heard from Aria, by the way?”

“No, why?” Ivory asked and turned around, leaning against the windowsill and nursing his tea. He frowned. “Anything happen?”

“No, no, not at all,” Luvander said, “I just got a letter from Holly this morning, the two of them have some savings and are looking at shops to rent in Lower Charlotte tomorrow. She asked if I wanted to come and advise them.”

“Shops?”

“Yes, they want to open a little tea room,” Luvander smiled, “sounds like Aria is quite the connoisseur. Should be right up your alley, actually.”

“Mm,” Ivory hummed, already lost in soothing fantasies of rows upon rows of imported green tea, and maybe, possibly, holding Raphael’s hand under the table, if the girls were discreet about this sort of thing.

“Want to come with me tomorrow?” Luvander asked, blowing a little ripple across the surface of his tea before taking a sip. “We could take them for lunch and you could, if you wanted, pick up some of that hypothetical cream for this mysterious friend of yours at the same time. You could even,” he suggested slyly, “invite your boyfriend.”

“Take my boyfriend on a date with a plus three of you, the woman he thought I was sleeping with and her girlfriend, both of whom are pals with at least one lady he went to bed with last year?” Ivory raised an eyebrow. “I think not.”

“Alright, just the two of us then,” Luvander shrugged. “Like the good old times. We’ll look like one of those disgustingly appropriate double dating teams,” he grinned. “Maybe there will be scandalous gossip about two of the Royal Dragon Corps wining and dining two fierce fancy ladies… wait, it’s lunch, what’s the lunch time equivalent of wining and dining? Lunching and… munching?”

“Cassie told me the new dragon should be arriving next week,” Ivory changed the subject abruptly. “Apparently Thoushalt and Compassus can smell it, or feel it in their souls, or something.”

“Mmm,” Luvander hummed, “you know what that means, right?”

“What?”

“Fresh meat,” Luvander grinned, his canines sharp and feral. “Fresh, unsuspecting corps member meat. We are going to have so much fun.”

Ivory opened his mouth to primly insist that he had no interest whatsoever in hazing a new recruit or making their life miserable - and then he thought about not being able to leave fresh clothes in the showers for coming in after a raid, and remembered all the pranks the boys liked to threaten his poor piano with, and remembered with a shiver that they were probably plotting something hideous to unleash upon him and Raphael even now, after last night. So: “yes,” he agreed with a sideways grin himself, because if there would be a new recruit in the next few weeks, attention would be very definitely diverted away from himself and his boyfriend and whatever noises either of them made in the night. “Yes, we will.”


End file.
